Hello Billy. Tell us a bit about yourself: where you’re from, where you’ve worked before, that sort of thing.
I am originally from Dundee in Scotland, although you wouldn’t guess from my accent. I moved to Manchester when I was 11, studied Chemistry at Hull University, and then moved around the country to take on exciting roles and develop my skills. I returned to Manchester around five years ago and still live there, right in the centre of the city.
I have worked in local government for around 20 years and have experienced almost every type of council. My main role has been leading and delivering significant change or transformation, but I have also managed every back-office service as well as some front-facing services.
My last role was in St Helens Borough Council which is a small metropolitan borough council in the northwest. There I developed and delivered a commercial transformation strategy and programme that was on track to save over £1.5m, offset costs of over £10m, and generate income of over £500k, within 3 years.
The Assistant Director of Transformation is a new role for Shropshire Council. Have you done something similar elsewhere?
My last three roles were called something different but were very similar to the role here. As Head of Support Services at Wokingham Borough Council I was responsible for most back-office services and introduced significant culture change while leading the transformation of numerous services in my own area of control as well as within other directorates. I was also responsible for a contract which introduced and managed a change partner that was brought in to support the introduction of a new Target Operating Model for the council.
While I was Assistant Chief Executive at Lichfield District Council I oversaw a council-wide reorganisation and transformation programme, and in my last role, as Assistant Director for Commercialisation at St Helens Council I was responsible for the council-wide commercial transformation programme which included significant change as well as supporting the introduction of a new target operating model.
Public service is at the heart of what we all do. What does public service mean to you?
I have a strong value set, which is why I want to work within the public sector, and more specifically in local government. My mantra is that I want to make a difference and inspire others to do the same. A chief executive once called the epitome of a 21st century public servant, and that is what I aspire to be.
While working in change or transformation, it is easy to focus on processes or systems. However, I like to ensure there is an appropriate focus on the outcomes for our customers, residents, and businesses, as this demonstrates impact, and with it, creates a motivating narrative to inspire people and make the change journey positive and worthwhile.
I spent a year in the private sector and despite doing well (or so my Managing Director said), I found it quite hollow as I only needed to worry about the bottom line (money) and delivered no benefits to people in communities. I quickly realised it wasn’t for me!
What was your biggest success?
I don’t wish to sound immodest, but it is difficult to choose the biggest success as I am proud of a great many of my achievements.
One I remember with most fondness was at Warwickshire County Council where I centralised and transformed the HR Service which had been decentralised for many years which has led to inconsistent practices and duplication. Over three years I was able to implement a change programme in a collaborative way, engaging my teams and customers, to ensure we worked together to delivered improvements to how we worked and the experience of our customers. We did this by changing our operating model, reviewing everything we did, removing waste from processes, and using innovative new solutions to digitalise and automate everything we could.
At the start of the journey my teams didn’t believe it would work, and my customers didn’t rate the service well (and were happy to tell me so). At the end, my teams came up to me and thanked me for all I did, and so did the customers. It was gratifying and made it all worthwhile. The outcomes were; increased morale, increased customer satisfaction, increased accuracy, and quicker processing, all of which meant we reduced our staffing by 30% (without compulsory redundancies) and reduced our budget by over 40%.
I often get told you can’t do more with less but in this instance, we did!
It’s important that we all learn from failure. What would you change in hindsight?
I am someone who likes to reflect regularly, and continuously learn from myself and others. One of the failures that I learned most from was when I first took on my role at Wokingham Borough Council. I was keen to show my worth and quickly started to offer advice and ideas but found people were dismissive of me and there seemed to be a perception that I was coming from a larger council and thinking I knew better (which was not the intention).
The experience taught me that I hadn’t taken time to get to know the people and the organisation, and that there is a great importance to “understand before being understood”. Since then, I have worked on my approach to ensure I do all I can to listen first, build relationships quickly, offer advice when people are ready to accept it, and do this in a way that is supportive and not perceived as critical or arrogant.
It’s a work in progress so people can let me know how I am doing (I love feedback as it helps me to learn and improve).
We all know we need to reduce our spend by £51 million this financial year. Is this realistic?
Yes, it is, albeit it’s not going to be easy! I wouldn’t have chosen to join if I felt it wasn’t achievable and that the council wasn’t ready and focused on doing it.
I appreciate the figure is large and scary, but we spend over £2m a day, and so this is less than 10% of our annual spend. Also, there are plans in place to deliver it and even if these don’t fully deliver what they believe there are blunt measures we can use that will get us through this challenging year.
The most exciting and positive thing is that we have put in place this role and additional resources to focus on doing thing differently and supporting positive and impactful change across the entire organisation. While the focus of this year is mainly on the financial challenge, we will also be putting in place the sound foundations and a change programme that will deliver The Shropshire Plan.
This plan, our plan, will deliver a new target operating model (how we work) as well as transformation projects that will deliver improved outcomes and further reductions in spend, leading to a positive impact on our residents and communities and ensuring our ongoing financial sustainability.
Call it ‘change’, ‘transformation’, or whatever: it’s a catch-all term for many things; what does it mean to you?
Reimagining what we do and how we do it to create efficient and effective customer-centric solutions across the entire system. Essentially, working with customers, partners, and staff, to make everything we do focused on achieving the outcomes needed in the quickest, most cost-effective way.
In your experience, what is the single biggest issue facing local authorities right now?
Money. The permanent austerity seen since around 2008 continues to be a real challenge and most local authorities have not moved fast enough to respond and innovate, instead making easier short-term cuts that have led to longer-term costs. This has left many in precarious financial positions.
In your opinion, are local authorities equipped to change quickly?
They can be as they are set up to do so. This was shown by the impressive response to the pandemic!
However, we don’t often take advantage of this as there is often a perception that “it’s too hard”, “everyone needs to be taken on the journey” (ie involved and engaged), there is a “fear of failure”, or we introduce bureaucracy and governance (treacle as Andy calls it) that slows things down. As a result, I often see things take much longer or not happen.
Therefore, we can if we want (and I want to)!
What’s impressed you most about Shropshire Council?
There are so many inspiring and motivated people keen to make a difference, get us through the current challenges and move us into the future target operating model. Everyone I have met (and that’s been surprisingly many after a hectic first two weeks) has agreed with what is needed and have expressed a keenness to get involved and make it happen!
In addition, I am amazed at the range of exciting and innovative ideas and pilot projects being undertaken and can’t wait to get involved and help them evolve into something truly special. It feels like an incredibly exciting time!