PrintProfiles
Meet some CIPFA members in the Midlands!!
- Carole Mills-Evans.....President Read Profile
- Stephen Hughes.....An interesting Career Read Profile
- Jane Dixon ...... Juggling being a Mum and a High Flyer Read Profile
- Alistair Thomson.....Every Child Matters Read Profile
- Neil Taylor......Action Man Read Profile
- Simon Perks........Accounting for Goodwill Read Profile
We're keen to receive other interesting profiles - to send us yours, please contact Lisa Commaine
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Meet your President - Carole Mills-Evans
Carole is the Corporate Director of Resources at Nottingham City Council .
Carole is the Corporate Director of Resources at Nottingham City Council. In this new role, Carole's directorate comprises HR/OD, Property, ICT, Legal Services and Finance; where she is the statutory CFO.
Carole began her career in the private financial services sector before moving into the health service, and then into local government in 1986.
Thrown in at the deep end as acting section 151 officer in the immediate aftermath of Government intervention at Walsall Council, she is credited with securing financial stability after a decade of difficulties; taking radical action to avoid a section 114 report. Carole was part of the interim management team which designed and delivered a far reaching recovery plan, kick-starting the successful "reinvention" of Walsall.
Carole also worked with her team to design, deliver and implement a medium term financial strategy; introduce policy led budgeting and decision conferencing; establish and embed risk management; all bringing a long-term sustainable solution. She also led on the financial aspects of the council's LSVT, bringing £1 billion of investment to Walsall over 10 years.
Carole also successfully established and developed the council's performance management function; a key enabler to securing a CPA category of 3 stars and "improving well" in 2005 in a council previously regarded as "Poor" in 2002.
Walsall Council received the maximum score of 4 for its "use of resources" in December 2004 and scored 3 under the 2005 and 2006 "harder tests"; with the best aggregate scores in the West Midlands. The Walsall finance team was runner up in the 2004 LGC awards and was shortlisted again in 2005. The legal service was a finalist for the MJ Legal Achievement of the Year award in spring 2005. Walsall's combined medium term financial strategy and decision conferencing and work on risk and opportunity management have been recognised by the Audit Commission as national examples of good practice.
Carole qualified in 1992. Active within CIPFA as an examiner, working group member, and on the Midlands Regional Council; she became Regional Council President in 2007 and was member of CIPFA's national Institute Council in 2006/7. She is active within the professional community and with the IDeA as a mentor and performance coach, and has chaired the West Midlands LGA Finance Support Group.
In addition to an active social life, Carole enjoys cycling, yoga and the gym, is a Sky Blues supporter and, until recently, a governor at a local secondary school. Carole has a 15 year old son who is a capable cricketer, rugby player and golfer, so a considerable amount of time is spent on touchlines, making cricket teas and providing a taxi service to various groups of muddy teenagers.
Click here for details of how to contact Carole.
Stephen Hughes
Acting Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council
Stephen talks to Lisa Commane about his career to date and the projects he has found most interesting.
Stephen Hughes has had an incredibly varied career so far. He began his work in 1979 at Coventry City Council as an economist where he gained a sound understanding of Local Government finance systems. After 2 years, he moved to the Association of Metropolitan Authorities as a finance officer where his role included negotiations with Central Government on grant funding, where he remained until 1984. Following this, Stephen moved to the newly formed Association of London Authorities for 6 years, where he was ultimately designated as Deputy Secretary.
Having spent the best part of a decade on Local Government finance issues, Stephen arranged a secondment to Islington's Policy Development Unit. This was initially intended as a short term placement, but the opportunity to become the Deputy Director of Finance (and subsequently Head of Service for Finance) persuaded Stephen to stay. Managing a group of accountants, he considered it an opportune time to gain an accountancy qualification and qualified through the CIPFA senior accountancy programme in 1997.
Stephen then had a year's secondment at DETR. He was involved in many issues there, but was particularly proud of two changes to Council Tax policy which he believes would not have happened but for his work - enabling disabled relief for Band A properties and allowing the reduced discount on empty homes.
Stephen served as Director of Finance at Brent and in 2004 moved to Birmingham City Council, first as Strategic Director of Resources and now as Acting Chief Executive.
When Stephen and I met, he discussed some of the projects that he has worked on which have proved to be cutting edge. This included the negotiation of an early PFI deal to outsource Islington's refuse collection and street cleaning services, incorporating the refurbishment of a depot (now on the site of the new Arsenal stadium) and vehicle replacements. At that point no one had worked out the details of PFI contracts. This meant that exit arrangements, sculpting of the unitary charge and pension arrangements had to be developed from scratch.
At Brent, Stephen was involved in outsourcing the Home Care service. At the time, the Government had voiced their intention to allow admitted bodied status to private sector companies providing works for the public sector, but this had not yet been made law. The contract was signed in anticipation of the details of the new legislation, which when passed were not quite as envisaged by the contract. Therefore the Council needed to lobby Government to enable the contract arrangements to stand.
Stephen explains that the most interesting projects are usually those where it is not just standard arrangements that are being implemented. At this point he mentions the work that Birmingham City Council have recently completed to refinance the National Exhibition Centre, generating £8m savings per annum and the first major bond issue by a Local Authority in recent years.
I ask what changes Stephen has seen in Local Government during his career so far. He begins by mentioning the greater tightening of Government control over Local Government finance which has had a number of effects, including numerous changes to the grant system ending in the current needs and resources based system, targets and penalties and capping.
Stephen expresses the view that in terms of the delivery of local services, Local Authorities have still not been liberated from the controls of Central Government, when compared with Local Authorities on the continent and America.
Other changes include the need to work more closely with the private sector, from CCT through to what Stephen describes as "customer focussed and more mature relationships with the private sector".
He also highlights the increased extent of partnership arrangements with other public bodies. There is now a focus on Local Authorities being "community leaders" within their locality, working with a range of bodies to deliver more generic outcomes such as wellbeing and quality of life, rather than a narrow focus on a particular service.
Stephen finishes the interview by talking about a subject that he is obviously passionate about. He describes Prudential Borrowing as a "sea change" in Local Authority finance arrangements and feels that people still underestimate the impact that the new powers have had.
We discuss his view that Prudential Borrowing gives Local Authorities the ability to plan its long term capital programme in a coherent way. Stephen is an advocate of developing 30 year business plans for the General Fund, incorporating estimates of what is likely to be needed to deliver a given level of service and linking with plans to meet asset management backlogs. This "powerful tool" is one that Stephen developed at Brent and has been developing whilst at Birmingham City Council, in order to identify the changes that need to be made to its asset base, in order to balance the books whilst also delivering a quality level of service. This is no doubt a subject that will continue to stimulate debate in the future.
Jane Dixon
Jane Dixon, Strategic Finance Manager at Walsall MBC, describes her
work and the daily battle to juggle being a Mum and a high flyer....
When I qualified as a CIPFA accountant in 1988, I quickly realised that monitoring budgets and closing accounts were not my main aspirations. Part way into my career I was fortunate enough to get involved in the financial aspects of larger projects being undertaken. Over the last few years I have provided financial input into two PFIs, one of the biggest voluntary transfers of housing stock in the country and the completion of The New Art Gallery in Walsall.
I have now moved on to my current project, which is helping to establish one of the largest strategic partnerships in Local Government. Inevitably such a project takes time, and after 18 months work on the project a preferred bidder has been appointed and final negotiations have begun in earnest. My work to date has involved providing financial input into the Invitation to Negotiate phase and evaluating a variety bids through to Best and Final Offer stage. A consortium lead by Fujitsu are the Council's preferred bidder and they bring to the table an exciting offer of improved services for customers and also an innovative regeneration programme for the borough. 22 work streams are expected to transfer along with about 2,000 staff to Fujitsu, Vertex and United Utilities. It is anticipated that the project will begin in the second half of 2005.
The work streams include central support service areas such as IT, personnel and transactional services, cleaning and caretaking, reprographics and importantly, all customer facing staff. The most challenging time is now up on us as we have begun negotiations. My experience of other large projects means I understand how difficult this time is. Both sides want to secure a good deal and although we will eventually work in partnership, commercial realities needs to be satisfied first.
With all large projects you sometimes feel it will never happen. The secret is to see beyond the detail and to never lose sight of the aims of the project and the importance that the expected changes will have on the citizens of Walsall. Large projects such as these are never predictable and the key is to be as flexible as possible. This is something I'm well versed in after caring for two children for the last few years. When I can leave early to spend more time with them I do, but as the pressure increases I need to review the balance between the two areas of my life. I am fortunate in having an understanding employer and, over the years, I have proved that you can do both things with well-honed organisational skills.
Just when you think you have the balance between work and motherhood under control, the smug feeling is suddenly lost as you realise the children haven't had their uniforms washed, you've missed the last two governors meetings and even oven chips seem to have lost their appeal for the children. In the past, when the children were younger, they aspired for me to be their dinner lady at their school but as they grow older and more independent I think they are quite proud of the changes in the borough that I have played a small part in. So as negotiations continue, affordability models are updated, public sector comparators completed and we get nearer to contract signature, I keep in mind the sense of satisfaction I will have when we get to contract signature and begin to see the improvements within the Borough take shape.
Alistair Thomson - Every Child Matters
Alistair explains how the RYOGENS project has helped to implement the "Every Child Matters" legislation.
It's not often that a project comes along in the world of management consultancy that is both interesting, challenging, leading edge and also socially rewarding. I have been very lucky in my career so far that I have found myself involved in such a project.
I joined Deloitte from PwC 2 years ago and have specialised in the public sector with a focus on the modernisation and e-Government strategy agenda.
For the last 10 months I have been working on one of the ODPM national e-Gov projects called RYOGENS. Whilst this sounds like some sort of bizarre medical experiment, it actually stands for Reducing Youth Offending Generic National Solution.
My role within the project was the Lead Consultant for the team working with Warwickshire County Council, who were the lead authority partnered by the London Boroughs of Lewisham and Tower Hamlets. The objectives of the project at the outset were fairly straightforward " to provide all agencies who work with children the framework to record any concerns they may have with regards to a child's welfare, before that child's situation becomes a statutory responsibility for any particular agency, and respond appropriately to that shared concern."
However, as with all things that appear straightforward on the surface, the reality was somewhat different. Designing a process and associated technology for a new way of working was complicated, add to that mix the fact that it involved at least 8 differing agencies made it even harder and then multiply that by three for each pilot local authority and the true picture of the complexity of the project begins to emerge.
A huge part of the process of building RYOGENS was consultation with all the relevant practitioners. This consultation process included teachers, healthworkers, social workers, connexions PA's, youth offending team workers, police officers and community workers. The consultation included visioning, change management, problem solving and information dissemination. This information then had to be translated into technical deliverables outlining our requirements from the technology build in order to meet the needs expressed by the practitioners.
In order to make RYOGENS a success it was crucial that this Statement Of Requirements (SOR) accurately reflected the ambitions of the practitioners, otherwise RYOGENS was doomed to follow the path of other technology projects and have an end product which was developed in isolation of the users.
To avoid this fate required an awful lot of communication and an iterative development process.
By adopting the RYOGENS process and technology the identification of early vulnerability in children is possible. A holistic picture of a childs situation can be gathered as opposed to the current practice in most authorities whereby each agency holds a small fragment of the picture with no one bringing these together and intervening before the childs situation becomes a high risk category. This allows the agencies to operate in the preventative arena which is a clear strategic priority for all local authorities emanating from the recent "Every Child Matters" legislation.
As a consultant, it is hard not to feel committed to a project where the ultimate aim of your work is to prevent children from becoming at risk. The moment RYOGENS was used by separate practitioners to record concerns about the same child and action taken was immensely satisfying for me on a personal, and professional, level.
More details on the national e gov't project RYOGENS can be found on www.ryogens.org.uk
Neil Taylor ..... Action Man
Neil Taylor was Director of Resources at Rutland County Council when this profile was written in 2004. His first book "Action Man: On Land, Sea And In the Air" was published in that year. Here is his account of this unusual sideline.....
Following recent reviews in the Independent, Public Finance's Spreadsheet, the London Cab Drivers Magazine (!), the Rutland Times, an article for Collect It! magazine, and a guest appearance on Radio Five's Johnnie Walker Show I have been asked to explain myself closer to home.
Despite giggles this is proving to be a popular book, with over 2,000 copies sold in the first six months, and sales literally worldwide - US, Japan, Hong Kong, Europe etc. It is also good to see top names such as Smiths, Waterstones and Foyles, as well as Amazon all stocking it. As someone said to me it really is a good photography book, despite the subject matter. I think it also demonstrates that you can put P3 project experience to some practical use. On the back of various rave reviews I shall also be going to the GI Joe ( the original name for Action Man in the States ) Convention in Orlando in June.
The objective of this book is to combine good quality examples of Action Man uniforms with great photography in the surroundings you would expect the figure to be in. This book was six years in the making, and is a painstaking piece of work that will appeal to a variety of readers. For those of you with rose tinted memories of a bygone age Action Man was in production from 1966 to 1984, and I don't think anyone in the country has got a complete set of everything as the range was so diverse. This book certainly doesn't cover everything but is none the worse for that. In the 60's you had one particular thing you enjoyed playing with as a child, and stuck with it for a number of years, unlike today's ready conveyor belt of the next thing which is literally here today and gone tomorrow.
The book is published in a handy hardback format with over 115 different uniforms featured in c300 photographs. Each uniform has a front and back photograph, with a close up to provide more detail, just like military reference books. There is also a Quartermaster section listing all the accessories in each set, plus a special features section telling you about each uniform with comparisons between different sets. The text runs to over 40,000 words, so the fun is potentially endless.
"Action Man: On Land, Sea And In the Air" by N.G. Taylor is published by New Cavendish Books, price £15.99.
Simon Perks - Accounting for Goodwill
Working in a big four accountancy firm isn't all fast cars and sharp suits. Simon Perks explains why KPMG's work with community organisations is even more rewarding.
Jackie* left school at 16 with no qualifications and few social skills. Apart from sporadic periods of employment (ranging from five weeks to two hours), she had spent most of the time since then on the dole. After a string of court appearances, Jackie was in severe trouble.
Just as things looked bleak for Jackie, she was 'recruited' by the New Steps scheme, run by the charity Tomorrow's People. The scheme, backed by the lottery-funded Millennium Commission, was run in cities across the UK and worked with young unemployed people like Jackie to help them get back on their feet and into employment.
As well as classroom-based training in key skills, scheme participants worked together in 'task forces' to complete projects within their communities. These ranged from cleaning graffiti from a community centre and repainting the gates of the parish church to refurbishing the foyer of a home for disabled people and revamping the playground of a local primary school.
Over the three years of the scheme, nearly five hundred young people worked successfully on task forces to overcome their own personal and social barriers, whilst at the same time putting something back into the community. As Tomorrow's People director Debbie Scott explains, "in most cases their participation has been the first time in their lives that they have enjoyed the ability to motivate themselves both on an individual and on a team basis. The ability to have a sense of their own worth is a legacy that will endure not only for themselves, but also for the community as a whole." The value of this legacy was proven by the fact that, by the end of the scheme, over half of the participants had entered employment or further education.
But what's this got to do with accountancy? Well, the Millennium Commission funds literally hundreds of schemes like this nationwide, and KPMG was asked to work with a number of them to ensure that they had appropriate systems in place to achieve their aims, and to provide assurance to the Millennium Commission that funds were being applied appropriately.
As part of this engagement, I've worked with over twenty community organisations across the UK, ranging from the Outer Hebrides in the north to Devon in the south, from Norfolk in the east to Cardiff in the west. These aren't the multinational corporations that KPMG normally works with, but small teams working long hours in cramped offices in troubled neighbourhoods.
Working with such committed individuals, many of them volunteers, has given me a whole new perspective on the work that I do. Rather than being one member of a large audit team, I've worked one-on-one with these organisations to improve their performance and achieve their aims. I've come up against troubling issues such as youth unemployment and social exclusion, and I've had to rethink many of my opinions and preconceptions.
I've also seen my ideas translated into action, and have realised how my work impacts directly on the organisations I've worked with. But the best aspect of my work has been seeing the impact that the schemes have had on the lives of the young people they work with. Let's go back to Jackie, for example. After completing her work with New Steps, she got a part-time job stacking shelves at Safeway and went back to college to retake her GCSEs. She's now working full time as an administrator for a national recruitment agency. I know that my role in this success was only a minor one, but I'm proud of it nevertheless.
* In the interests of confidentiality, this is an amalgamation of several individuals' experiences.