Government warns Cheshire East to improve at quicker pace with best value notice
Cheshire East has been given a warning from the government it needs to improve at a quicker pace, amid concerns about its financial sustainability and governance.
On Thursday 8 May, The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government issued the council with a best value notice.
The notice is a formal notification that the MHCLG has concerns regarding the council and requests that it engages with the department to provide assurance of improvement.
The department expects councils that have been issued with a best value notice to continue leading their own improvement.
The notice has been posted on the government's website and states it has been issued following;
- Significant concerns about the council's financial sustainability and medium-term financial strategy;
- Concerns around leadership capacity, governance, scrutiny and culture identified by the corporate peer challenge and Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) reports
Minister of state for local government and English devolution, Jim McMahon OBE, said in the letter to Cheshire East: "The council has engaged constructively with the department about the challenges it faces, including during the process for exceptional financial support.
"However, given the seriousness of the issues identified, and the pace to deliver the level of change required, I am setting out the department's expectations of the council in providing assurance of progress."
The council has been informed of a list of actions it should now take, including:
- Develop and agree a single overarching improvement plan which addresses recommendations from the council's various external reviews and has clear milestones
- Continue taking urgent steps to improve its financial sustainability, by delivering against its agreed transformation plan, delivering identified savings and addressing the recommendations made by CIPFA
- Continue to comply with the Department for Education's improvement notice by delivering appropriate and sustainable improvements in relation to the council's children's social care services
- Continue working with the independent assurance panel, making full use of its expertise and responding to its recommendations
- Continue to increase senior officer capacity and stability, by making permanent appointments in a robust and timely manner and taking steps to reduce staff turnover in the longer term
- Ensure that it has effective corporate, governance and scrutiny processes that enable decisions and improvements to be made at pace, and performance to be accurately monitored. This should include improvements to the council's committee system as recommended by the LGA following its corporate peer challenge
- Continue engaging with the department on at least a quarterly basis to discuss progress
Council leader, Nick Mannion (Labour), told the Local Democracy Reporting Service today: "The best value notice recognises the improvement work that's underway but it formalises the way that we will reassure the government, and the government are asking about pace and progress of the improvement work.
"We will continue to drive forward our own improvement plans.
"We need to increase the pace and one of the challenges we've had is we've been recruiting new senior managers."
He stressed this was not a S114 and was nothing like it.
"It's not about bankruptcy or anything like that, it's about reporting the progress we are making on our various plans, transformation and financial stability to government," said the council leader.
The notice will be reviewed after 12 months.
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