One year into the job, Cheshire West and Chester Council’s chief executive Steve Robinson has been taking stock. DAVID NORBURY reports

WITH the first six months of the new council’s life behind him, Mr Robinson pointed to issues such as regeneration priorities in Chester itself, Ellesmere Port, the Weaver Valley and the rural areas and the council’s agenda for worklessness and for localism.

“We have a six year run to actually do this. Many local authorities have elections every year so there is always turbulence with that.

“We haven’t got that, if we have stable politics, stable finances, we have a real chance to actually deliver on a proper strategy rather than living from one year to the next.”

He believes the important things he has achieved in the first 12 months: “Include the fact there is now a perspective that the leadership of the organisation is down to its political leader and its managerial leader and those two individuals have to be a team to move the organisation forward.

“I don’t think that was necessarily the case with the previous authorities.

“Second to that was the requirement to think long term.

“We have a financial strategy, that has to be refined to be even better next year than it was in the first year.

“But again we are talking about a financial strategy that mirrors the priorities of the council.

“The third thing is that the priorities of the council are not actually any good unless they mirror the priorities of our partners, for example the primary care trust.

“So again we have created really strong partnerships and we are all clear about what we are trying to do around a whole range of themes whether it is children’s services, health and adult social care, tackling regeneration, jobs and skills, tackling community safety.”

He continued: “I think, after quite a number of years, there is a real clarity about what the priorities are.

“More work needs to be done about the specifics but it is there, it is a shared agenda.

“I would like to think that just as we started the discussions at the beginning of 2009 and we came into being on April 1, what you did see was a reduction in crime in the new council very early on.

“That was, I think, due to the fact we were focusing on it together.”

Mr Robinson accepts there are “two schools of thought” about the new council.

“There are people who did not want the new council and there are people who had wanted a new unitary council in this part of Cheshire for some time.

“Either way there is a big agenda for us about credibility.

“Whether people are with or against this model of local government it needs to be proved to people it is the right thing to do.

“We have been very conscious in the first six months about trying to get the basics right so, for example, Chester city centre is a cleaner place than it was before.

“Again that is because we have been saying we need to focus on that, we need to join up some of the different services and make it better.

“And we will continue with that agenda really for the next six months as we develop that.

“There is a real problem of maintenance in Chester as well.

“It is not just about keeping the public realm clean and the signs needing to be better, the walls need money spending on them and the cracks in the pavement where the grout has gone, there are a whole range of things like that which will be done over the next couple of years.

“At the same time we have to plan now for the big issues in Chester which are around a new theatre, the Northgate retail centre and those type of things which need to be brought together.

“Effectively there are three stages to how we are going to bring Chester back and that is the same for Ellesmere Port, Northwich and Winsford.”

Mr Robinson suggests that “clearly the iconic brand, the real message, is Chester”.

“People may not like that but that is the reality, it is the centre of the new borough.

“If we do not get Chester right, the rest of the new borough will suffer. If we do get Chester right, everyone will win.”

Looking to the future, he suggests: “First of all we need to firm up our strategies.

“We have our strategy about our regeneration priorities, other themes include community safety and health but we have to get them more detailed.

“We need to be much clearer about what will be done in the next six months, 12 months, 18 months.

“Effectively, we have a five year plan for those strategies to become more detailed, that is the first thing.

“On the same theme we need to be clear about the 450 buildings we have inherited from the predecessor councils.

“Obviously there is a lot of talk about County Hall but actually County Hall is a catalyst for the whole transformation of all our assets.

“Thirdly we have to think about our culture, how do we develop the leadership and management of our organisation and support that, how do we put new practices in place.

“Fourthly, it is about finance. Right from the onset we inherited a position whereby we had to save £15m as a new council.

“For a whole variety of reasons, including the credit crunch, that was a £30m problem.

“We came into being on April 1 and what became clear as we started to address that was that there would be further questions on public spending over the next three to four years and we took the view that we needed to address that as well.

“So we identified this was an ideal opportunity to deal with the £30m problem, identify another £30m and start on the journey of creating £60 million of savings in Cheshire West and Chester within the next three years.

“When you think that when the new council was launched it was just about saving £15m over three years and now we are saving £60m over three years it is a completely different agenda to what it was before.

“So there is a big job to be done but I think what is more interesting is that we have to do that while at the same time improving what was good performance by the previous councils.

“We are actually going to keep performance as it is, preferably make it even better whilst taking out effectively 25% of our costs.

“We are in the process of achieving it and £30m is already in the bag.

“We have made those savings within the first six months of the new council whereas before we had planned to make £15m of savings in the first three years.

“We will achieve the other savings by April 2011 which is the next round of the comprehensive spending review whether it is a Labour or a Tory government.

“We take the view that if we can get the finances sorted out now, that gives us financial stability for the next four years.

“For any business in the land, four years is a very good time line.

“Fifthly it is really about ensuring we have a team here in Cheshire West and Chester which isn’t just the council, it’s about the partnership with the voluntary sector and other public sector agencies.

“I have been to two events now with carers, with people who work in the children’s area.

“We actually need to create an army of thousands of people who are all striving for the same thing, we all understand what we are about and we are all working together.

“That way we can move mountains.