Deborah Cadman is the interim chief executive of Birmingham City Council, appointed in 2021. Previously she was chief executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority, appointed in 2017. She was chief executive of Suffolk County Council from 2011 to 2017, and chief executive of the East of England Regional Development Agency from 2008 to 2011.
This interview was conducted on 6 January 2022.
Q: Could you tell us about your role in growth and regional policy over the past few decades?
I started off working in Birmingham City Council in the late eighties. That was when the Council took a very brave decision to invest in infrastructure and invested in the International Convention Centre, the national indoor arena, because it needed to respond to the shift in the structure of the economy of Birmingham at that time, which was heavily rooted in manufacturing and the coal industry.
Over the last 20 years or so that I’ve been involved in economic growth, a lot of people have ignored that fact to their peril. And the levelling up process that we are going through at the moment needs to reconnect with that undeniable truth.
I then went on to work in the North East and had the privilege of working with Mo Mowlam. I worked for Redcar and Cleveland – again Redcar and Cleveland was going through massive turmoil with the demise of the steel industry and the need to restructure its economy. More importantly, I participated in the Single Regeneration Budget that was around at the time. There were some things that were not quite right and efficient about the Single Regeneration Budget, but the concept of looking at how you change the local economy as a place, and how you understand all the contributing factors to that, was really important. Having one institution or organisation that had an overall guiding mind that could bring all the different players together was really important.
Then I moved to central government where I worked in the modernisation team with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as a Special Adviser. Then I worked for the Audit Commission doing best value inspections. I moved back into local government, working in Suffolk in a rural district. I saw the power of regeneration and growth from the other end of the telescope if you like. Bury St Edmunds is a very pleasant, reasonably affluent town, but there were parts of that town that were had been left and ignored for a while. It was essentially around estates that missed out and didn’t benefit from any of the any of the growth that we were seeing in that part of the county.
I became Chief Executive of the Regional Development Agency (‘RDA’) for the East of England in 2007. The East of England was one of the few RDAs that made a positive contribution to the Exchequer and did, what I believe to be, some quite amazing things around offshore wind, renewable energies, etc. We talked about the East of England powering the world through clean green energy, feeding the world through its agricultural sector. We were proud about what we achieved as an RDA, investing in infrastructure as well. It’s no good having the most amazing array of offshore wind if you can’t then connect all of that electricity generation into the main grid. There’s no point having one of the largest pools in the region if you can’t get the goods in and out from Suffolk into the rest of the country. Investment in infrastructure was seen to be a really, really important part of what we did.
I became chief executive of Suffolk County Council and then chief executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority, focussing on transport and brownfield land reclamation. I joined the Combined Authority with great hopes, but I was really frustrated because the ability of the Combined Authority to make a profound impact on growing the economy through economic development and growth was pretty much limited to transport and administering money for brownfield reclamation.
Now I’m at Birmingham and we are doing some really great stuff. We are host to the Commonwealth Games, which feels like a bit of a moment in terms of Birmingham’s growth and development. Investors, both domestic and global, are knocking on our door, saying ‘We want a piece of the action here because we believe that Birmingham is the next place of significant growth and development outside London.’ That’s my experience.
Q: What do you think have been the key successes of policy, and where are the main frustrations?
One of my main frustrations is the notion that trickle-down economics works: if you have a metro or train or a bus service, if you build a bridge, everybody will then benefit. That’s not true, except in that it will take a long time before anybody realises the economic benefits. I think you need to be intentional about the investments that you make. I think we need to be braver and realistic, acknowledging that sometimes you need to intervene in the market when the market is either broken or not delivering what it needs to deliver. I have seen examples where that hasn’t been done and you’re either left with white elephants: great shiny buildings that people have no engagement with, or great businesses that local supply chains just can’t engage with or relate to.
The other lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t simply invest in the hard infrastructure stuff without also investing in communities and in people as well. I do think we need to be more intentional about skills. When I first worked in Birmingham, and we were building the International Convention Centre and the National Indoor Arena, big projects, they were literally shipping people in from Europe to do the plumbing, to do the electrics. It wouldn’t have been beyond the wit of man and woman to have understood the massive potential and to have invested in the skills development with local people to allow them to take advantage of the opportunities that were coming out. That’s a real frustration: we’re still not good enough at anticipating what’s happening. Now we know that green manufacturing is going to be the next big area of opportunity, we’re talking to the government right now, saying
‘Let’s work with you and with local skills providers to developing a curriculum that is going to work for local people and for the sectors that we’re developing and encouraging at the moment.’
Q: When you think about those strategic issues for jobs and skills and investment right now, what is the relationship like between the City Council and the Combined Authority mayor relationship? How much do you defer to the strategy of the wider West Midlands? Or do you have the power and drive it forward and ask for help from the mayor from time to time?
I think it’s the latter rather than the former. If you look at the West Midlands, Birmingham is the largest local authority within the conurbation. That doesn’t necessarily mean to say that we’re the best. I’ve been in post now for six months and I still have a big job to do around refocusing the council, supporting the political leadership to just get the basics right, but also be very clear that there are masses of opportunities that we can’t let slip through our fingers.
There’s a balance to be struck here. The fact that I’ve worked on both sides of the fence, if you like, means I can appreciate the contribution the Combined Authority can add, and the value we can add, to what we’re doing. For example, we are directly commissioning the skills function of the Combined Authority to do a lot of the curriculum development work with some of the skills providers because I simply don’t have that expertise. It makes absolute sense to commission the Combined Authority, and to be very clear about the value and the contribution that they can add in helping us do that. Our business partners expect the City Council to do a lot of this but are very happy that we’re commissioning the Combined Authority to do it on our behalf. I think at an officer level, we’re being very pragmatic.
When I left the Combined Authority and had my exit interview with the Mayor, I said, ‘Andy [Street], your biggest challenge is that you’ve got the biggest mandate in the region, yet you’ve got the least power.’ And that’s really frustrating for a man like Andy Street. He can’t bear the fact that he can’t pull the levers and do stuff because it’s just not his responsibility, or he hasn’t got the statutory leave or support to do a lot of this stuff. And the Combined Authority is very small, there are 300 people.
Q: Is the West Midlands exceptional for having in Birmingham such a disproportionately large central local authority?
It is interesting and complicated and messy. If we allowed it to, it could be really destructive. But why would I not want people with big brains and experience to work with me on delivering the best skills, opportunities, and offer to the residents of the city? I think we’ve got to be pragmatic about all of this.
Q: How have the different parts of Whitehall engaged with Birmingham or the West Midlands over time? Have you felt there is a ‘Whitehall view’?
It’s really fascinating. I was a Commissioner on the Smart Government Commission last year, looking at the role of the Civil Service. It was sponsored by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. There were some big challenges in there around the role, size, scope and intellectual capacity of the Civil Service. I think the local offer of the Civil Service in the West Midlands is completely woeful. I am appalled at the lack of proactivity from civil servants to work more constructively with the organisations and institutions that are trying to make sense and deliver the policy that has been created at the centre, without any regard about whether it’s fit for purpose, whether it’s going to deliver what it needs to etc.
I feel quite cross with the Civil Service and the way in which it’s not prepared to change and grow and work differently. One of the offers that I’m making to the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities (‘DLHUC’), who have now supposedly moved their headquarters to Wolverhampton in the region, is to say, ‘We’ve got one of the most ambitious levelling up plans in the country; we’ve got the Commonwealth Games with the most amazing legacy plan; we’ve got a Future City Plan with seven or eight areas for fundamental regeneration across the city. Work with us.’ I want to create joint teams of local government officers, civil servants, with the police, with health to have an almost Single Regeneration Budget-type team where we’re all working for the same thing. And if DLUHC are really serious and passionate about levelling up communities, how can a civil servant who never worked outside London tell me how I’m going to level up the city of Birmingham, from London? It’s just madness.
When I was Chief Executive of the East region RDA, I worked hand in glove with the head of the Government Office in Cambridge. It was a symbiotic relationship. We both wanted the same thing – abolishing the Government Offices, I thought again, was a bit short-sighted really. They were rooted in the place and understood and appreciated the place. They understood what you would need to do in order to grow and develop the economy and these communities.
Q: And other Whitehall departments?
The Treasury is what it is. But I have got personal relationships with a couple of the civil servants, with whom I feel that I can have sensible conversations. They understand and appreciate what I’m trying to do. But that is around personal relationships, it’s not about the department as a whole. I think the Department for Transport is probably a little bit more accessible. They’re a bit more rooted in in Birmingham. I think the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy are completely remote. The Department for Environment and Rural Affairs is okay. The best relationship we’ve got is with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (‘DCMS’), and that’s because of the Commonwealth Games more than anything else. Department for Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) is prepared to work at a local level with local partners as well. When I was Chief Executive for Suffolk County Council, for example, we wanted to do something completely different with the Job Centres and DWP were really up for that. Having the Job Centres structured as they are, and positioned where they are, wasn’t making any sense to a rural county like Suffolk. They were really open to working in a different way and we created joint teams.
In Suffolk, my relationship with the Department for Education was good. In the West Midlands Combined Authority it was pretty woeful. That was because the Combined Authority movement was very clear about wanting more powers around skills. Some of us wanted powers over the regional education commissioner. The Department for Education was very hostile to that. They felt that this was a pre-emptive strike on behalf of the Combined Authorities. In terms of local government and our relationship with the Department for Education, it doesn’t feel like a shared endeavour. It doesn’t feel like we all want the same thing, which is good quality, supportive education. It doesn’t feel like we all want to work together to make sure that those kids that aren’t in education still get opportunities etc. It feels very much like a regulatory, hostile organisation that does nothing other than criticise and challenge, without being helpful and supportive. Personally, I think that some of the changes that were made around moving schools out of local authority control in some places has worked fine, in other places it hasn’t worked well at all.
Q: How much do you think the attitude of the centre within Whitehall matters – the Prime Minister and the Chancellor?
When I was in the Combined Authority it was more relevant, in this job, it’s less relevant. I’ll give you a real-time example. We want to be bold and ambitious in Birmingham. We think we’re at a moment, and we think there are opportunities for the council to be different – but more importantly for the place to be different. I’m working with Liam Byrne on the Art Gallery Museum service. We want to change it; we want to be different. I’ve said, ‘Let’s be really ambitious about this and let’s talk about having a Guggenheim in Birmingham.’ The first Guggenheim in the UK – why shouldn’t it be in Birmingham? Let’s build on the brilliant experience of Bilbao. I had a conversation with DCMS and their first reaction was, ‘Well, you’re not going to get any money from us.’ I’m saying, ‘Well, I know that. I’m not coming to you for money because I’ve got my meeting with the Guggenheim Foundation in New York. I’ve got Langleys. I’ve got Goldman Sachs. I’ve got a business case where we can deliver the majority of this without seeking any public funding at all.’ And personally, I think that’s right. We will use the assets that we’ve got differently to fund it. But what I do want from government is support for our ambition and to work with us to make sure the collections are right and all that other stuff. It was almost a disappointment to them that we were saying, ‘We don’t need you to do what we want to do anyway’. It was ‘well, we should be able to control this.’
That’s something that local government needs to step up to. We should stop feeling that we can only do stuff if government give us permission or money to do it. We’ve got a lot of ability and freedom to do that. Another example from Birmingham is that we’re the 20th largest landowner in the country. That is a real surprise to people. When I started six months ago, I was running a deficit of £150m. We’ve now balanced the budget. We’ve done a lot of hard work over the last six months to do that. But with that amount of land holding and assets, I should be running a £300m surplus, not a £150m deficit. I’m working with the leader and the administration to say, ‘Okay, let’s just step up a bit’. Some of the councillors are really worried about this because they’re saying we don’t want the government to think that we don’t need money from them, which is an interesting conversation, isn’t it? It’s fascinating, really fascinating.
Q: Why has there been a reaction against some of those earlier models – the Single Regeneration Budget, RDAs – that you thought were working?
It’s about control and power. When I look back at the Single Regeneration Budget, certainly in the North East, it did have a really profound impact. It had an impact because it involved a whole range of public and private players, and it also involved the public residents themselves. The Single Regeneration Budget (‘SRB’) was all around having a single pot of money that was then allocated and spent according to the economic and social priorities of that area. What I don’t think the SRBs did, which I would do now if I was in control of a single budget, a single pot, is that I would be ruthless and leverage that money. If we had half a billion to invest over 20 or 30 years, I would be going to the market saying, ‘Let me create a financial model that is completely different to the traditional kind of model that we’ve got at the moment’.
We’re having conversations like that in Birmingham because, as part of our levelling up plan, I want to invest more money in intervention and prevention. At the moment I am constantly having to deliver high-cost statutory services to deal with crises. I can’t pull money out of that because I can’t not have child protection services. I can’t have higher levels of delayed transfer for the elderly. I want to keep the elderly healthy and supported at home. I want to protect kids. I want to invest more in youth services. But I can’t do that at the moment because the model that I’ve got is all about addressing crises. What I’m saying to the leadership is, ‘Our landholdings are asset-based. Let’s talk to private investors about leveraging that’. That might be a social impact bond, a different financial model where I can invest in early intervention and prevention and then use the savings. I am convinced that we will see savings over a period of time to pay back all of that money.
We’re trying to do things differently now. I had an initial conversation with the Treasury about this as part of our levelling up plan. It was as though I was talking Martian. They didn’t get it. It might be partly because I was overtaken with enthusiasm. But I do believe that if we’re going to address some of the big challenges that are coming up – health inequalities, rising youth crime – we’ve got to be different. We’ve got to invest in our communities in a different way, at an earlier stage.
Q: What do you think of capacity and capability in the local government sector as a whole?
I think the sector needs to up its game. We need to be louder. We need to be bolder. We need to be confident. And we’ve got every right to be.
Look at how local government has dealt with COVID. We could have saved billions if government had given local government responsibility for test and trace, for managing the distribution of PPE, for managing vaccinations in a completely different way. I can still recall conversations we were having at a West Midlands level about shielding. Why the government felt that it could manage distribution of food to local people from Whitehall still confounds me. All that happened was that there was waste in the system. Local authorities said, for example, ‘We’re going to take responsibility for making sure that Muslim families don’t receive food parcels that have got sausages in them’. We know our local communities. We know our local people. We understand what their needs are far better than somebody sitting in a chair in London, in Whitehall. There was a lot of duplication and a lot of waste, but I would argue that we did it in the right way.
That’s just one example of how local government has been able to rise to the challenge. I think COVID also exposed a lot of the big challenges around education, including the leadership and management of schools. I’m not for one minute suggesting that headteachers haven’t done a heroic job. But, if there had been more of a collective response to COVID through the education system, I think it would have been more effective.
Q: What did the RDA give the region that it doesn’t have now, if anything?
That single pot and that single focus. In Suffolk, we had responsibility for statutory planning powers – we had responsibility for managing the conversation about housing numbers and where they should be allocated. We also had responsibility for capturing and allocating funding for key infrastructure projects like the A14 trunk road development, or the A47 development, going in and out of Norwich. There are certain things where it doesn’t make any sense for it to be managed and developed at a local level. It’s got to be done regionally to get that sense of size and strategy. It wouldn’t have made any sense at all for East Suffolk Council to be responsible for investing in the A14 from Felixstowe through to Kettering. The East has a very complex political environment, and it doesn’t help when you’ve got a lack of clarity about roles, responsibilities, and statutory responsibilities. A lot of it depends on relationships.
In the West Midlands, I understand it’s been tricky in the past. I would say the relationship between Wolverhampton and Coventry, is really strong. And we’ve got a three cities approach to retrofitting, for example – which I think is going to be nationally influential – with almost 200,000 social homes being retrofitted later on in the year, which is a complete disrupter of the market. And the three Labour leaders are working incredibly well on that. Sandwell is a challenge for a host of reasons. But at an officer level, we work closely and well with Sandwell.
Q: Some argue that RDAs lacked an effective democratic scrutiny body and relied on their mandate from central government. How important was that in practice?
The East of England had an assembly of local leaders. I think that’s one of the reasons it was effective. It was a negotiation between different players, held accountable by this regional assembly.
Q: What’s your experience on how we avoid towns and rural areas being overlooked through a focus on core cities? Taking the example of the West Midlands, where Redditch and Bromsgrove are outside the Combined Authorities – though they contribute to discussions as non-constituent members?
I thought and think that it’s bonkers. It’s an artificial boundary. If you’re setting out to grow the economy, you’ve got to do it on the basis of the axis of economic activity. There are a number of areas outside those local authorities that make a massive contribution to the economic vitality of the West Midlands. I think it’s an artificial construct to say that if you live outside the boundary of Birmingham, then you’re not part of the economic growth and can’t contribute to growing the economy of the West Midlands. You should do it on the basis of economic footprint, economic activity.
Q: What would be needed to change that – would it require central intervention?
Yes it would. It would take primary legislation to change the boundary of a Combined Authority. The West Midlands Combined Authority has now been in existence for five years and the economy is a very different place now than it was five years ago.
Q: Does the UK Government need a plan for each region, for England as a whole, for the UK as a whole – should the approach be more organic and bottom-up?
I think it needs to be a bit of both – it goes back to my original point about trickle-down economics. There will some things that the market will enable and support and deliver, and it will be fantastic. But there will be other things, like affordable housing for example, where you will not get the levels of affordable housing this country needs unless you intervene in the market. You have to pick those areas that need a specific focus and a different kind of focus. And you need to be intentional about the way in which you intervene, I would suggest.
I had a fascinating conversation with a huge range of people after the first wave of COVID where we were talking about the future of city centres. A lot of the developers and the owners of the big shopping centres in the city centre were saying, ‘Let’s wait and see. We’re not going to invest or we’re not going to change what we do. We’re going to wait and see’. I said, ‘We can do that. Is it not better for us to be clear about what city centre we want for Birmingham and be quite intentional about how we enable that to happen? Of course, we will wait and see what the impact of COVID is long term for some parts of that, but actually there are certain things we should do right here and now to mould the city in a way which we want to see it be in the next 5, 10 years.’ So it’s a bit of both. You have to be quite clear about those areas that you’re backing, I think, and intervening on.
Q: How did you think about the role of London in shaping the economy elsewhere in the country?
It’s been a disadvantage. That’s in part because it’s too easy: you’ve got a capital city, a global city, that generates wealth and does okay. What hasn’t been done is thinking through how you share that wealth back to the rest of the UK. I don’t think any government has been good enough at that. To a greater or lesser extent, some of them have done that, but I don’t think that any of them have been good enough at doing that. People can see all the shine in the South East and in London and say, ‘What about me’?
In Redcar, honestly, Whitehall could have been on a different planet – and that was because they devolved or delegated and said more or less, ‘Here’s your pot of money, here’s your investment by and large, knock yourself out’. On the economy: ask me that in 10 years’ time when High Speed 2 is built. I think High Speed 2 will be really positive for Birmingham. I think it will be more positive for Birmingham than it is for London. I don’t think there’s a business case for it, I genuinely don’t. But there is an opportunity for us to demonstrate the catalytic impact of having something like that on the city. We know that HSBC and Goldman Sachs made decisions to relocate to Birmingham for a whole host of reasons but predominantly because they would be able to get back into the capital in 45 minutes. I think High Speed 2 is going to be great. Whether it will be great for London and the rest of the UK is debatable.
Q: If Whitehall and Westminster wanted to do something which would really make a difference in closing regional divides and boosting productivity outside London, what would you urge them to do?
I would urge them to see levelling up as more than just investing in trains and roads and bridges. I would be encouraging them to invest in people and communities and to be quite thoughtful about what that looks like. Relocating the Green Investment Bank to Leeds is brilliant, but what does that mean when you’ve got people on the train going down to London anyway to have the meetings? DLUHC has got 1,000 civil servants in Wolverhampton, but I don’t see the Permanent Secretary and the Secretary of State having an office and coming up to do what they need to do? Don’t just make these grand statements, really mean it and shift stuff out of London. I cannot tell you how brilliant is to have HSBC and Goldman Sachs headquarters in Birmingham. It’s the symbolism. It’s about commitment. It’s about confidence. It’s about attracting other stuff, which is brilliant.
I don’t want you to think that I’m hostile to trains and roads. I’m absolutely not. Norfolk and Suffolk are so beautiful because they’re so difficult to get to. In terms of the economic contribution that Norfolk and Suffolk can make to the rest of the country, it’s a challenge because it hasn’t got that connectivity.
Q: Over the last thirty years, what have you been involved in that you would say really made a difference and what’s been your biggest frustration?
I think the Regional Development Agency, with the work and the investment we did around infrastructure but also investing in the future. By that I mean investing in offshore wind and understanding the runes. We were brave in taking some decisions about investing in that. At the same time, we were investing in innovation: the Cambridge cluster and Hertfordshire cluster, investing in future technologies and innovation and research. I’m really proud of what we did. I think it’s been nationally, if not globally, influential.
What I’m most frustrated about at the moment is the inability of government to see the big challenges that are facing the country. Both economically and from a social perspective, we face challenges that the government cannot deal with on their own. At a local authority level, I cannot deal with the education attainment gap, increasing youth crime, etc. My frustration is that the government is unwilling to see all of the solutions as being solutions of shared interest.
ENDS