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Is the time when Camden needs to find £100 million in savings over four years the best point at which to put its most senior and experienced officers onto part-time working?
Will the savings to be made from shared salaries outweigh the non-financial costs of such a move?
It is in times of recession that senior management teams really earn their salaries. They have to find ways to deliver more with less, have to evaluate services carefully and have to recommend tough decisions to their Boards. Any manager can find ways to spend money when it is plentiful – as Fred the Shred showed at RBS. It takes wiser executives to save the most money with the least pain – and to maintain staff morale and motivation through the lean period.
Camden’s Senior Officers face a challenging period ahead, developing and assessing policy alternatives for the cabinet. Sacred Cows will have to be slaughtered. And when changes have been agreed, they will have to be implemented well in order to deliver the promised savings and maintain service standards.
The council will have to deliver more for less. Nick visiting the Kentish Town Baths, a major project undertaken when Camden was Lib Dem led.
It is highly questionable whether this is a good time to start sharing our senior officers’ time with another borough facing the same issues. You might say that this is no time to have their work cut, because they will have their work cut out.
Labour’s Cllr Blackwell has said that sharing executives is an enabler of larger savings through shared services. Shared Services could deliver valuable benefits but the key to their success is effective implementation, requiring more executive attention and expertise, not less.
We face a time of anxiety for Camden residents too. Many of them already think that the council suffers from a remote and impersonal bureaucracy that does not communicate. Forcing the senior executives to spend half their time in another borough can only make this problem worse and increase residents’ concern.
There is an argument that appointing Moira Gibb as Islington’s CEO is good for Islington. She is highly experienced in managing an inner London borough and has no re-location problems. They can save on their recruitment costs as well. But there is no benefit for Camden unless we pay much less than half her salary for half her time.
Ms Gibb will have to invest a lot of time in familiarising herself with Islington, its particular circumstances and its team. It is lower rated than Camden, so there is more improvement needed, even before cuts are considered. How will she be able to lead the fundamental reappraisal of Camden’s services and costs if she is trying to take on the leadership of Islington as well?
At the very least, the Labour Cabinet must be open with its shareholders (the residents) about what savings are on offer, what deal has been negotiated with Islington, who is going to tackle the strategic issues that Ms Gibb no longer has time for, and what the non-financial costs will be that will offset any financial savings.
Nick Russell, campaigning for Kentish Town
Originally printed in The Camden New Journal.
