A dark chapter in Liverpool’s history is coming to an end

It was the morning of Friday, December 4, 2020, and something strange was happening.

Mayor-elect of Liverpool Joe Anderson was due to chair a meeting of his council’s cabinet. With Covid-19 restrictions still very much in place, the meeting had to take place virtually.

The mayor was a no-show, with very little explanation offered for his absence. Some would have wondered if he didn’t feel sick or if he suddenly had to take a phone call. The reality was much more dramatic.

Early that Friday morning, the mayor of the town had received a knock on the door. Upon opening it, he was met by a large group of police officers who told him he was under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witnessed the intimidation. He was immediately taken to a police station for questioning.

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He wasn’t the only one either. Merseyside Police also made arrests in Aigburth, Ormskirk, Southport and West Derby as part of the same investigation, known as Operation Aloft – with all five men taken to various police stations across the region.

The city leader, who was questioned by detectives for hours, was later to be suspended from the Labor Party and by the end of the month he would agree to stand down from his role, never to return.

The police investigation into him and others dealing with construction contracts in Liverpool is still ongoing today. Mr Anderson has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged.

But the events of 4 December 2020 would have huge ramifications for Liverpool City Council itself, ramifications that are still being felt today. About two weeks after that dramatic day, then local government secretary Robert Jenrick ordered an emergency inspection of the council to obtain “direct and independent assurance that the council is meeting its best value obligation”.

Of course, what that inspection, led by Max Caller, found was nothing more than a board complying with that obligation. If December 4, 2020 was a dark day for Liverpool, then March 24 the following year was another.

Mr Jenrick stood up in the House of Commons to reveal a shocking litany of council failures. He spoke of a “serious failure of governance” and an “environment of intimidation” within the Cunard administration. He said the emergency inspection painted a “deeply worrying picture of mismanagement”.

The appellant’s report went into further, painful detail about the awarding of dubious contracts and a “disturbing lack of record-keeping”, including reports that some key documents were dumped in skips. Cabinet reports were found to have been added to and amended after being approved by elected members.

There was understandable anger in the city at those who oversaw this period of chaos and mismanagement. There was particular anger that failures by the leaders of a Labour-led city meant that commissioners, appointed by the Tory government, would now take over part of Liverpool council.

The initial team that arrived in Liverpool in June 2021 consisted of Chief Commissioner and former police officer Mike Cunningham, Joanna Killian, who was chief executive of Surrey County Council at the time, regeneration leader Deborah McLaughlin and highways commissioner Neil Gibson .

Initially, the team was given key powers over the council in areas such as regeneration, highways and estate management. In their new roles, they will work closely with Liverpool’s new mayor, Joanne Anderson, who had replaced her neighbor of the same name in that spring’s election – as well as the council’s chief executive Tony Reeves, one of the few people to be praised in Caller report for trying to return things to local authority with problems.

It wasn’t long before rumors began to circulate of a rocky working relationship between Mr. Reeves and the commissioners he helped bring in. Things became even more tense the following May when news of a massive contractual blunder – potentially – was revealed to the council. costing the city a further £16 million.

In the wake of the scandal, Mr Reeves’ number two, chief financial officer Mel Creighton resigned and by the summer he had also left. While Mr Cunningham has always denied that commissioners forced the chief executive to leave, Cllr Richard Kemp, who was Leader of the Opposition at the time, told the ECHO: “He left because the commissioners wanted him to go. To deny that he was excluded is simply not true. .”

Mr Reeves will be temporarily replaced by Theresa Grant, who arrived at the council in September facing a worsening situation. A month earlier, the government, unhappy with the pace of change at local authority level, decided to extend the intervention to what many would consider a large-scale takeover.

Commissioners, concerned about remaining “systemic” weaknesses, have called for other powers to be handed over, including over financial, governance and recruitment decisions. By the end of the year, another commissioner, Stephen Hughes, was added to the team against an increasingly worrying backdrop.

But things can change quickly in politics, and they did in Liverpool during that time. As the council moves to abolish the position of elected mayor, the ruling Labor group has voted for Cllr Liam Robinson to be their new leader. When Mayor Anderson and her position left the political scene at the local elections in May 2023, Cllr Robinson led a new team determined to ensure that commissioners would not be forced to extend their stay in the city.

Cllr Robinson was joined in running the city by new chief executive Andrew Lewis, who arrived from Cheshire West and Chester Council and replaced Ms Grant, who left with praise for her firefighting work in the eye of the storm.

The two men quickly got to work alongside the commissioners, and within six months the noises coming out of the mouths of government officials were much brighter. In December, Mr Cunningham revealed to the media a plan to return some of the key powers to the council’s leadership by March, with a view to ending the formal intervention in June as hoped.

This week we received confirmation that the formal intervention will end next month, with Mr Cunningham explaining that the council is now in an “unrecognizable place” than when he arrived three years ago.

But he and his team aren’t done yet. Mr Cunningham will now chair a statutory improvement board, which will advise council bosses over the next nine months. He said this is a major step up from the statutory intervention we have seen over the last three years.

As the chief commissioner said, there will be challenges for Liverpool Council, but this latest news looks like a significant step and the end of a dark chapter in the city’s history.

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