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I worked there from 2015 to 2017 and was involved in the bottom level of democracy. The council has no executive power over day-to-day decisions. They hold a vote of confidence in the Chairperson every year and other than that they’re little more than a talking shop. I don’t remember enough about the constitution to say whether they would have a vote on something like a part sell off. Culturally it had reached a place where it was strictly hierarchical and speaking up was looked down in, in many ways it felt closest to the civil service which is where I started my career. From the various places I’ve worked, I’d say the franchised model has been best for promoting the healthy tension between top level ‘we need to go this way’ and operational ‘that won’t work because of xyz’.
As for the mayor of Birmingham, it was him and Mark Price who set the partnership up for a fall with their footprint expansions during and after the financial crisis whilst never sorting the back end processes out. The rumour was they didn’t get on and that was evidenced in how they built completely parallel organisations. I was in IT for Waitrose and had a counterpart in John Lewis and another in ‘Group’. There was only really enough work for one of us. IT overall had something like 1200 heads supporting a 500 store footprint across JL and Waitrose which was absurd. Six months after I left they brought the outsourcers in and everyone I used to work with was TUPE’d or made redundant.
As often happens, Street went off to to politics, Price was made Cameron’s business Tsar and the new leadership carried the can for the consequences of their decisions.
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ASTTer
Interesting. Do you work there? [i don’t] They were looking to sell 25% last year. I thought it needs only the representative council of the partners not every single partner in an open, but agree even that would be hard to get - maybe for a list of reserved matters it would need a full vote, I’ve not looked at the partnership agreement.
It was idealistic when set up, but it has had several bad years, isn’t paying out profit shares (three years running, which makes 3 of 7 since the 1950s i just read) and I was told it didn’t take external investment last year because it couldn’t find an investor.
I suppose it may have found one and then there partner council rejected the investment anyway!