When David Kennedy, the chief executive of Northampton borough council, joined the authority in 2007, he took over the running of a council whose services had been called among the worst in Britain.
The Audit Commission had described Northampton's financial management as poor, said little progress had been made by the council in the previous three years, and noted that some key areas, such as planning, had deteriorated.
Since Kennedy's appointment, the picture has changed. The most recent assessment of the council by the Audit Commission notes that almost there is still much to do, Northampton now performs adequately and has the leadership and capability to continue to improve.
"New staff and departments have enabled the council to improve services for local people," says the commission's Oneplace website.
Kennedy spent the previous seven years working at Barnsley council before joining Northampton, where he has a budget of £200m to provide services for a population of 205,000 people.
"Barnsley was a metropolitan council, with a lot of challenges," he comments. "Northampton is very different industrially, but in some ways, the challenges are quite similar. Northampton has a proud history, but unemployment here has risen considerably and the economy is critical to everyone. If we sort that out, a lot of other issues also get sorted, so there is a major issue about growth and how the town can grow in the future, as well as a lot of issues about the quality of life. If there is no funding to support that, people will be very concerned."
In an interview for today's SocietyGuardian, Kennedy says that he has a participative approach to leadership - but at the end of the day, it's about getting on with the job.
That job is hugely challenging, give the size of budget cuts in prospect, but Kennedy remains update. Faced with possible cuts of up to a quarter of his organisation's budgets, Kennedy says the issue is to focus on the remaining budget and using that to do the most possible for local communities. But he does acknowledge that maintaining the motivation of staff through the hard times ahead, particularly given the two-year pay freeze for public sector workers, will be tough.
What's going to help? Local partnerships continue to be vital in shaping local services, says Kennedy. "Local partnership is in the DNA of Northampton and will continue to be so," he comments. He doesn't particularly mourn the ending of the Audit Commission's Comprehensive Area Assessment framework, saying that local partnerships are about what goes on in Northampton, not about a national template. But he does concede that there is a role for some kind of performance framework.
"I'm not sure myself that having no national performance assessment regime makes sense, but the key is that it doesn't come from on high," he says, "and that may take some time to develop."
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
