The million-pound-a-year cost of commissioners running Birmingham City Council

The price of recovering Birmingham City Council from financial ruin is set to be expensive – and on top of that, the council has to pay for expert commissioners which will cost more than £1m a year.

The latest figures show the eight commissioners earned £581,805 in six months – most paid in daily fees of £1,100 to £1,200 each. Top earner was Chief Commissioner Max Caller, who personally pocketed £102,900 in fees alone, with expenses, fuel and hotel accommodation on top. He works, on average, 13-15 days a month.

Commissioners present a quarterly breakdown of their monthly earnings on the council’s website. In the first quarter, from October to December, they earned £282,330 between them, rising to £299,475 between January and the end of March.

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In that time they have helped oversee a major improvement and turnaround plan, helped the council set a legal budget, negotiated a landmark agreement with the council’s main unions that should mark the end of equal pay demands for good until in April 2025 and produced two interim reports for Secretary of State Michael Gove.

IT expert Myron Hrycyk also helped change the broken “Oracle” IT system. The eight commissioners are Max Caller, John Coughlan, Chris Tambini, Pam Parkes, Jackie Belton and Myron Hrycyk, with Lord John Hutton and John Biggs acting as policy advisers. Announcing his package of interventions for the struggling authority, Secretary of State Michael Gove said the eight were “best placed to take on these roles directly because of their individual knowledge and experience of local authority management, decision-making, governance , finance, human resources, IT and commercial development.” He said he was “confident they will be key to resolving Birmingham City Council’s issues as quickly and efficiently as possible”.

He also announced that the intervention would remain in place for five years, which was longer than elsewhere and reflected the “severity and scale of the challenge in Birmingham compared to other intervention areas”.

Mr Caller, 73, previously said the commissioners’ intervention and cost would not have been necessary if the council had controlled its financial affairs.

In a Birmingham Live interview, published in full in the Inside Birmingham with Jane Haynes newsletter last month, he confirms that before he was appointed to lead a government crackdown on the city council, Caller had been doing the media rounds to offer himself. his thoughts on Birmingham’s financial crisis.

He had spent time on the board in 2019 as one of a group of non-directors providing external support, so he was well placed to have a vision. The Caller claimed that Birmingham had made a massive error in choosing to host the Commonwealth Games in 2022 and had told them so back in 2019.

It was “a mistake” and a “distraction”. “The problem with councils that are in trouble is that they need to focus on just getting better rather than trying to do nice new things,” he said last year. “There is a limit to political and managerial capacity and if you spend time doing the Commonwealth Games, you cannot deal with the serious problems you already face. You can’t do beautiful things if you haven’t done the boring. very good.”

Read the full Max Caller interview here.

He says his full focus in the months he’s overseen business since then is on lifting the council that serves residents so it’s once again “the best in the country” – because that’s what residents need and deserve. “Every council in the country (including Birmingham) needs to remember that they are there for the citizens and that is what motivates me, always.

“It’s all about the people, so when (anyone) says I don’t care about these people, then (they) really don’t understand my motivation. My motivation throughout my career in local government is that it is the people who matter, even if this is difficult for the council.”

That’s why he insists on the highest levels of performance from officers and members, motivating them to act quickly – and that may not always win him friends. “In every intervention it is very hard work. But the end result is a better board. No matter how fast this board goes (on its improvement journey), it won’t be fast enough. This council has reached a difficult place and its citizens deserve better.”

Residents are currently facing a 9.99% council tax rise, a mass sale of council land and properties, hundreds of council job losses and a devastating series of budget cuts.

Public consultations are currently taking place which will result in the closure of libraries, youth centers and day centres, cuts to services for children and young people with special needs and more pain to come. As to who is to blame for these looming cuts, Caller is clear. “Every proposal in the budget is a proposal of the council. The commissioners didn’t dictate what it should be – the council chose to present it to them,” he said.

Asked if commissioners were to blame for any of the painful decisions residents now face, he added: “The council runs Birmingham, not me. Our job (as commissioners) is to help the board make good decisions, get them right and deliver them. If we (the commissioners) put ourselves in the shoes (of going out and meeting residents, visiting community groups, understanding their needs and wants), there is no room for council. He has to do his job.” “It’s not my job” to talk to residents, he adds.

Read the full Max Caller interview here.