Government sends ‘ministerial envoys’ into London borough following best value inspection

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has decided to send ministerial envoys into Tower Hamlets Council in light of a best-value inspection that revealed failures relating to governance, leadership, and culture.

In a ministerial statement made on Tuesday (12 November), the Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, Jim McMahon, said he was satisfied - after considering the inspection report - the council is failing to comply with its Best Value Duty under Part 1 of the Local Government Act 1999 Act.

"Given the evidence of serious concerns in the report, a broad and supportive intervention package, with robust external assurance, is necessary and expedient for the council to secure compliance with this duty", he told MPs.

"I am proposing directing the council to work with Ministerial Envoys to reconfigure its existing Board into a Transformation and Assurance Board, and to draw on existing and additional members to appoint independent and external Leads for Leadership, Governance and Culture & Partnerships; all areas where the Council is currently failing", he said.

The envoys will oversee proposed changes to the board, including agreeing its scheme of work and meeting agendas, preparation of the council's Continuous Improvement Plan and an open recruitment exercise to appoint a permanent lead for the council's improvement work.

In addition, they will attend meetings, provide ad hoc advice and challenge, and work closely with the board leads for governance, leadership and culture & partnerships.

The council will also have to allow the envoys all reasonable access to their premises, documents, employees or members.

The envoys will issue their first report after four months and will be embedded in the council for an initial period of three years.

The best value inspection report responsible for McMahon's decision was authored by Kim Bromley-Derry, Suki Binjal, Sir John Jenkins and Philip Simpkins and handed to the Government in July 2024.

While the report concluded that "good progress" is being made under the best value themes of use of resources, service delivery and continuous improvement, it raised "serious concerns" regarding the best value themes of leadership, culture, governance and partnership.

On governance, the inspectors made specific mention of the chief executive's plan to change to whom the monitoring officer and Director of Legal Services report.

The two roles are vested in the same person. However, for monitoring officer issues, the postholder is to report to the chief executive but as Director of Legal Services they will report to the Director of Corporate resources on all other matters.

"We agree with the council's view that this is not an unusual split, however, in our experience, this will be fraught with difficulties and will be confusing to the organisation", inspectors warned.

They added: "As a result, it is our opinion that the re-positioning of the role of the monitoring officer is a risk at a time when increasing the confidence in leadership is important."

Inspectors meanwhile found issues with trust throughout the organisation, noting that the "entire organisation seems to be impacted by a lack of trust – between officers, between politicians and between officers and politicians".

The report said that some staff had described "feelings of anxiety and even intimidation", which have made them reluctant to challenge senior managers and the administration.

In some cases, staff members interacted with the inspectors using personal emails or under pseudonyms over concerns they could suffer repercussions for speaking to the team.

Issues around appointments were also raised in the report. The inspectors highlighted the decision to re-hire Stephen Halsey as chief executive in 2022, who was in the role when Lutfur Rahman was previously mayor between 2010 and 2015.

Rahman was temporarily banned from running for office in 2015 after being found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices.

According to the report, the entire corporate leadership team has changed since May 2022.

The churn, combined with the high use of interim posts and consultants since May 2022, has impacted the current culture and stability of the organisation, the levels of trust exhibited in the council, organisational capacity and the speed of decision-making, the report said.

A belief held by some that the council is 'going back' to 2014 is in part fuelled by some senior officers from the previous administration led by Mayor Rahman returning to similar roles since 2022, the report said.

"In our view it is difficult to see the return of these senior officers as anything other than an unacceptable level of patronage," inspectors said.

Inspectors also believed that the mayor's office "too often operates in parallel to the council's corporate centre".

"This has an unhelpful impact on both the governance and leadership of the council and creates confusion both internally and externally," they added.

Issues concerning politics in the organisation have also impacted governance, according to the report.

Inspectors said that, at times, "there is a lack of respect and cooperation between political parties, which is having a negative effect on good governance".

"We are also aware of a large quantity of videos made about local politicians, often containing negative views, that are shared within the wider community", it added.

In addition, inspectors found that individual politicians, particularly women, "seem to carry a significant personal burden as a result of this culture".

The report mentioned one full council meeting in which female opposition councillors felt unsafe and noted that a corporate peer challenge team also heard from female councillors that they believed they were given less time to contribute at meetings.

Commenting on the council's interaction with the best value inspection, inspectors said the council had at times been "very slow" in providing documents and arranging interviews. "In some cases this could be seen to amount to a reluctance to share, cumbersome, or even active obstruction," the report noted.

Inspectors also described the council as "overly sensitive and defensive rather than being open and transparent about areas for improvement".

A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets said it welcomed the Government's decision to "appoint an envoy rather than send in commissioners, with a plan to work together with us on a support package, with the council retaining all its powers".

It added: "We are delighted to have increased our diversity at senior officer level, with eight people from ethnic minority backgrounds now working at Director level or above. We have brought in senior officers with significant experience from other councils.

"Only two permanent senior staff recruited had previously worked for Tower Hamlets, which is not unusual for the sector."

The spokesperson added that the report's comments concerning culture "include reference to rivalries between all parties and political groupings within the council".

Adam Carey