Legal steps are taken after supervisory directors to supervise the Birmingham Council, checking a controversial decision to close adult day centers.
An application for a judicial assessment is in the names of Robert Mason, 63, and Jenny Gilbert, 50, who attend day centers for adults with physical and learning disabilities in the city.
The legal challenge states that there was an over -range by the Commissioners, contrary to the Local Government Act, when they refused to allow three separate applications by chosen councilors to invoke a cabinet decision to close four -day centers for further investigation.
James Cross, on behalf of Mason, his uncle, who attended a day center in Harborne for 45 years, said that the commissioner “had made a mockery of the local government” by overwriting the established process and preventing complete control of the closures.
“From our point of view, the local democratic process was removed because of their direct intervention,” said Cross. “Research is essential for local democracy, especially when a cabinet decision is taken by 12 people out of 101 councilors.”
After the Council effectively declared itself bankrupt in 2023, the government appointed a team of six supervisory directors to supervise its daily running up to five years, until October 2028. Collectively they have paid almost £ 2 million in reimbursements and costs by the council since the appointed.
They are led by Max Caller, nicknamed “Max the Ax” for his heavy approach to pushing through slices with cash -stretched local authorities.
There was a protest in March when four of the nine adult day centers run by the Council were closed in the city as part of swinging budget reductions, with the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, Preet Kaur Gill, who say that the commissioners had closed “democratic control” by refusing the call-in-seeking.
Beller said there was “pre-decision” during the Day Center closures, and it would have cost the council £ 100,000 a month to postpone.
Cross said: “I proposed a proposal for Harborne Day Center where it would be converted into a community shub, so that it could be used outside of daily hours to generate income. They just didn’t want to know.
“There is no innovative thinking, it’s just simple, yes, we will reduce that. But in the short term, it is a profit in terms of finance, for long -term pain, because you simply kick the situation further.”
A court session on July 21 will determine whether the judicial assessment can continue.
With an increasing number of councils that are struggling financially, there are now commissioners among six other local authorities: Croydon, Tower Hamlets, Nottingham, Slough, Woking and Thurrock.
Jonathan Carr-West, the Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), said that the Commissioner Model “was very the favorite mechanism of the last government and is continued by this government” to intervene in struggling councils.
“If people say it takes away the local democratic control, that is true, that is explicit what it does, because in a sense the point is to say: we are going to submit people who don’t have to worry about being chosen and can make the really difficult decisions,” he said.
“In Birmingham, where they have completely rejected the cultural services, where they have reduced children’s services by another 25%, local politicians simply would not be able to make those difficult choices. [Commissioners] are not responsible or invested in the long term. “
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He said that commissioners “work a lot within a certain management paradigm, and they are not meant to be there to innovate”. Analysis by the local government chronicle Last year it noted that almost 70% of the commissioners who were sent in struggling councils were male and that more than a quarter of a quarter or more had not worked in the local government.
Carr-West said that the use of commissioners was not a “scalable” solution for the problems that councils were confronted with. “It feels like a plavery gypsum approach, and possibly one that stores problems for the future, instead of a real transformation process,” he said.
“We still have a third of the councils throughout the country and say:” If nothing changes in the way we are financed, we will go bankrupt in the next five years. “
“Well, you can send Max Caller to two or three councils, but you can’t send him to a third of the councils in the country. It cannot be a system -wide approach to save the local government.”
In June the local minister, Jim McMahon, said that he liked to send commissioners to run Croydon Council, because her finances “quickly deteriorate”.
The relocation led to a return among councilors, with the executive mayor, Jason Perry, and said: “non -chosen work commissioners can ignore local democratic decisions, including forcing tax increases and cuts”.
The commissioners in Birmingham are contacted for comment.
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