Is The Oldham Model The Future For Town Halls Under The Financial Cosh?

Cllr Jim McMahon pictured in his office at Oldham Civic Centre last week.

Following my interview with Oldham Council leader Jim McMahon last week, I’ve written an article which has been published by The Guardian today. You can see it on the paper’s Northerner blog here. Or you can read it below!

IF TIMES ARE HARD in Whitehall, they’re even harder in your local town hall.

Last year’s round of government spending cuts left councils struggling not only to balance their budgets, but also to work out ways of providing services for less.

Ideas of how councils can do things differently vary by political colour, from Tory Barnet’s no-frills ‘easyCouncil’ to the ‘Co-operative Council’ championed by Labour Lambeth.

One new council leader in the north who thinks he’s got a more subtle answer is Jim McMahon. Something of a rising star in the Labour Party, he became leader of Oldham Council after May’s elections at the age of just 30.

While admitting to being “inspired” by the Lambeth example of outsourcing services to co-operatives and mutuals, he used an interview last week to outline two main reasons why he thought it wouldn’t work in Oldham.

“First of all, we are in a mixed economy already so the private sector have a very important part to play,” McMahon said. “I think it’s more beneficial to Oldham that we allow them a route in.”

He added: “Secondly, as a Labour group we value the public sector. We didn’t think outsourcing to anybody particularly was more advantageous than having a strong public sector body.”

So when McMahon talks of his “Oldham model” it seems to be less about getting others to run services wholesale, but rather encouraging them to take on certain services where it’s judged appropriate. It’s also about changing the whole philosophy of the council, including more devolution of powers to local areas.

He said: “Our starting point is that the council itself is a co-operative in its own right. We are not for profit, we’re meant to act in the public interest, and the vast majority of our workforce and all of our council members are Oldhamers or live in the borough.”

Describing the current relationship between the council and local people as “mutually antagonistic” McMahon said that had to improve: “A co-operative council can’t work in that way. It needs to be far more people working together for the same end.”

Snow-covered bins in Dobcross. We might see differences in the council's approach this winter.

Citing winter gritting as an example of where local communities might be better placed to do the job, McMahon suggested the council hadn’t been flexible enough over the years, perhaps unsurprising given the mixed terrain of a borough that stretches from the edge of Manchester to the Pennine hills.

He said: “I think we need to really loosen up a bit, allow the communities to do things in their area without always feeling the need to come back to the council for permission. And then for the council to say, without us being the bureaucracy and the red tape, how can we make things happen and support the community to deliver?”

But doesn’t this all sound a bit like the government’s often-mocked Big Society? McMahon doesn’t think so.

“The difference between the Big Society and the Co-operative Society is that the Co-operative Society is about how we work together to provide community, and community groups will need support,” he said. “So, we are allocating three days paid leave for council staff who will support local communities. An example might be that we have a finance officer who can help a local group do their books.”

As for the council’s own books, as many as 400 more jobs could go in the coming months to help balance them, a grim ritual which has become familiar in Oldham in recent times.

For McMahon, those latest cuts must be accompanied by a new ethos at the Civic Centre: “We’ve got no choice. The council budget has been cut and cut and cut, and either we continue to cut until we don’t have a service that responds to any extent, or we do things in a different way that’s more cost-effective.”

While the national media focuses on the intrigue of party conference season, councillors gathered in Liverpool this week and Manchester next will be comparing notes on how to keep their services going for less. Many will be watching Oldham, as well as Barnet, Lambeth and the rest, with interest.

(Editor’s note: The two articles I published on Saddleworth News, which have a more Saddleworth slant on them, can still be found here and here, along with the audio of the interview. The Guardian’s Northerner blog, which is a great source of interesting stories from across the north of England, has its homepage here)

Author: Jude Gidney - Editor

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