Specialisms
I specialise in the following areas:
- Governance
- Housing
- Investigations
- Member Development
- Transformation
An experienced local government professional, with 37 years’ experience including 20 years in senior leadership roles. Recent experience as the statutory monitoring officer for a unitary authority and as deputy returning officer.
Extensive experience working with elected Members including, Portfolio Holders, Executive, scrutiny committees etc.
Senior management career has spanned a particularly broad range of local authority services, from revenues and benefits, customers services, homelessness and licensing, to legal, democratic and electoral services and risk management.
A versatile and adaptable leader with broad knowledge of the sector at a strategic and operational level. An astute manager with sound political, governance and financial skills coupled with an engaging and approachable leadership style that values and inspires others,
A consistent track record in transformation and managing change, improving efficiency and delivering high quality cost-effective services. A strong proponent of partnership working to maximise resources and improve the lives of residents.
Key Strengths/Area of Expertise
- Experience as Monitoring Officer for a unitary authority, part of the “golden triangle” of statutory officers and member of the corporate leadership team
- Politically sensitive and astute with extensive experience building relationships with and working with elected Members
- Experience of local government reorganisation and of ensuring effective governance through organisational change
- Particularly wide-ranging experience at senior level of varied council services across a number of portfolio areas
- Experienced in successfully managing transformation across a range of services and of organisational transformation programmes
- Strong people leadership skills; able to manage and motivate diverse teams providing differing services across multiple locations
- Excellent financial management skills with a track record of delivering efficiency savings
- Thirteen years’ experience at board level leading a leisure trust charity with annual turnover of £1 million
- Successful track record of taking on new leadership challenges, reviewing, developing and improving service delivery and outcomes
- Ability to build effective multi-agency partnerships to maximise resources for local services
Professional Qualifications
- CIPFA
- IRRV
- Post Graduate Diploma in Public Finance and Leadership
Notable Achievements/Value Added
- Improved process and efficiency of General Election and Police and Crime Commissioner elections in the role of Deputy Returning Officer
- Improved and refined democratic processes through reviews of key parts of the Council’s Constitution
- Implemented transformational change to respond to the challenge of homelessness:
- Secured multi-million pound external funding and internal investment
- Developed and implemented £30m capital programme to provide Council owned homeless accommodation
- Expanded and improved partnership working
- Reduced rough sleeping from one of the highest levels nationally to one of the lowest
- Led the Council’s response to refugee resettlement, successfully balancing the needs and rights of residents and refugees
- Worked closely with Portfolio Holders to successfully lead and develop a wide range of activities to support the community through the Covid pandemic
- Delivered transformational change to modernise customer service; incorporating digital self-serve and assisted digital services whilst consistently achieving 98% customer satisfaction ratings
- Track record in identifying and delivering efficiency savings
Relevant Sector Knowledge
- Monitoring Officer & Deputy Returning Officer
- Legal and Democratic Services
- Homelessness, Resettlement and Gypsy and Travellers Services
- Customer Services
- Revenues and Benefits
- Licensing
- Finance
- Adult Social Care Financing
- Registrars and Coroner
- Local Authority Charities Governance & Charity Law
LGR Experience & Expertise
Experience of leading services at a senior management level during the establishment of a new unitary authority following a reorganisation of local Government in Bedfordshire (Bedford Borough Council in 2009).
- Establishing shared organisational values for the new organisation
- Supporting employees through the reorganisation
- Supporting Portfolio Holders to undertake new areas of responsibility
- Leading the amalgamation of differing workforces with contrasting organisation cultures
- Reviewing operational requirements including processes, procedures, contracts, ICT platforms etc. to implementing the most effective operational processes
- Implementing communications process for employees, partners and the public
Previous experience at management level of implementation of a new unitary authority (Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council in 1998)