Growing up in Bermondsey in the 1950s and 60s, Dr Barry Quirk never imagined he would have a career in local government, let alone find himself as the UK’s longest-serving chief executive, having held the post at Lewisham LBC since November 1993.
His first taste of local government came while he was doing his PhD when, in need of a job, he took a housing role at Tower Hamlets LBC, working with the homeless. He still remembers some of the families he helped and the conditions they faced.
‘I thought at the time I would be working in local government doing this sort of job for two-to-six years, until I finished my PhD, then I would go into academia where I knew I felt much more at home,’ Dr Quirk says.
But the chance to help people improve their lives appealed and he soon moved into policy at Bexley LBC. ‘I could see I could make improvements in what social services were doing.’
The fast-paced policy environment was a stark contrast to the slow-moving world of academia. While he has never regretted switching career, he maintains a scholarly interest in his past world.
It was a very political time. Thatcherism established a modernity to local government, bringing private sector disciplines to public services. In local government, that brought with it the new era of compulsory competitive tendering (CCT).
Alongside the consumerism – with citizen’s charters – of the John Major years, it modernised local government, which had previously delivered services from its own needs instead of the public’s.
Dr Quirk says it dramatically changed the efficiency and the productivity of local government and created citizen-centric services.
But he adds: ‘Local government became much more an instrument of central government policy.’
From 1982-86, Dr Quirk served as a Labour councillor in Southwark, at a time when politics was ‘much more tribal’. He describes the Labour rate-capping backlash of that period as a ‘self-harm strategy,’ which ‘enfeebled’ local government. ‘I think it has done a three- to four-decade disservice to local government’, he admits.
‘Some would argue it was a matter of absolute principle…and this was a piece of political theatre worth doing. I disagreed with them.’
After a stint in Bexley, he went to Lewisham to become a policy officer at the corporate centre.
‘I thought it was an excellent place, but after a while I realised I was just a clever guy drafting policy and I didn’t really want to do that, whereas in housing I had developed and managed things.’
After 18 months at Newham, he was soon back at the ‘pragmatic’ borough of Lewisham.
As education was handed over to local government, the then chief executive, John Harwood, gave him the choice of becoming the first director of education, or working on the council’s plans for CCT. He chose the latter.
‘I had rather mastered the area of education so why would I want to do it again? I knew nothing about contracts for street sweeping,’ he says.
Dr Quirk became chief executive during the committee era. ‘The role of the chief executive was really about reinforcing the corporate and reinforcing coherence when one committee would make one decision and another committee would make another in contradiction,’ he says.
The chief executive had to balance the political imperatives of different decisions while controlling the finances. ‘The role of chief executives was much more about gradually getting strategic control,’ he says.
‘Within eight years, until the year 2000, chief executives became the Jedi knights of the public sector. Local government chief executives like David Henshaw, Steve Bundred and Bob Kerslake, were being invited to do one review after another.
‘We were trusted individuals who understood politics but who also understood delivery, and so we could be invited into the inner sanctums to do challenging but helpful critiques about how the civil service could change.
‘Obviously, with the crash and the 2010 government we went back down to being zeros again and I think it is going to take more than 10 years to get out of this situation.’
He says of the split between chief executive and leader: ‘There is always an element of cross-dressing, where the politician meddles in management and the manager steals public interest decisions.’
He claims his greatest achievements have been social – particularly his role in pushing for a second inquest into the New Cross fire in 1981, in which 13 young black people died.
‘I do think being trusted by a broad group of your community is the most important thing you can achieve,’ he says.
Since the crash in 2010, Dr Quirk suggests the biggest thing in local government has been the austerity programme, which he believes has been ‘too steep’ and continued for too long.
While the Audit Commission’s Comprehensive Performance Assessments provided a template for well-performing councils, the scrapping of the commission has left its mark.
‘People copied the best or they learned from the process. Since 2010, with the abolition of the Audit Commission and the sense that local government could solve its own problems and were masters of our own destiny, I think what happened is that there has been much greater divergence.
‘At some point we have gone from divergence to disarray, where literally councils can make up something and say “we are doing this in our locality because this is what locally we think is right”… when actually there may be no evidence to support this at all.
‘I’m not saying convergence was absolutely right but I think a divergent approach which enables any flowers to bloom may be a wasteful one.’
The current shift which puts local government at the heart of the sub-regional economic agenda works well for cities, but is not a natural agenda for the Conservatives or their counties.
While Dr Quirk welcomes the economic growth role, he suggests the scope for council chiefs to grow the economy is ‘marginal’.
‘Many of them are chasing a very small fraction of mobile capital around the country. Nonetheless, I think focusing local government on having a healthy economy is very positive.’
He describes the future of local government as ‘both troubled and challenging’ and ‘potentially very bright’.
‘I think we are in a very odd era and that this era will continue and become even more difficult.’ Social media is creating a distracted age and trust is at its lowest and still declining.
‘We should always be pleased there is a decline in deference, but we shouldn’t be pleased at a proliferation of ignorance,’ he says. Local government must develop three themes, he suggests: ethics, empathy and efficiency.
‘We have to focus on being more attuned to the ethical dilemmas and conundrums which the populations face. We have to to be more empathetic with citizens and service users. Finally, we have to be more efficient. Taxpayers are simply not going to give us the money.’