Wirral Council looking to shake-up senior leadership positions
Wirral Council has announced a proposed restructure of its senior leadership positions as it seeks to make further budgets savings – and respond to recommendations made in a number of recent independent reviews.
The changes would create a new management structure and will involve the removal of some existing management roles, a review of others and the creation of two new Executive Director positions.
One of the outcomes of the restructuring would be to make savings in senior management costs while at the same time speeding up the transformation of the organisation and improving finance and governance processes, which have all been highlighted as essential by external specialists.
We have clear priorities for the authority to achieve and we need a strong leadership structure to make sure we are driven to deliver. Managing our finances, keeping a tight grip on the governance of our projects and moving more quickly to change and adapt need to be top of our agenda.
Speeding up the pace of transformation was one of the conditions of the council being able to access Exceptional Financial Support from government again this year.
That position was reinforced in the Annual Auditors Report where the pace of transformation was raised as a significant weakness, along with the need to ensure the council has sufficient professional capacity, capability and senior leadership to match its regeneration objectives.
Effective executive leadership was also highlighted within the recent Palin report into Wirral Council’s regeneration programme.
Having the right people within the Executive role, it stated, is critical in terms of giving confidence to elected members and external stakeholders and in resetting the internal dynamic within the council itself.
If agreed at committee, the ‘People’ element of the new structure would be led by an Executive Director, which would be a new appointment tying in the statutory areas of Childrens Services, Adults, Health and Strategic Commissiong and Public Health.
The savings within the structure would be achieved from better integration of functions across Public Health, Adults and Childrens and efficiencies.
The Place structure would also be led by an Executive Director, replacing the two current Director roles of Neighbourhoods and Regeneration.
Changes are also proposed across other services which will provide greater focus in more corporate-based areas.
The proposed new structure will go before the Senior Officer and Appointments Staffing Sub-Committee on Monday 23rd March. If approved, there will need to be a staff consultation process before implementation as it effects a number of leadership roles.
