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The Public Sector Executive Podcast is the new podcast bringing you closer to the public sector leaders in the UK. Covering everything from the environment to the economy to transport, our podcast will bring you the latest news, views and insight from the people responsible for shaping the country's future.
We had a saying in Yorkshire Forward, you know, no one ever died doing economic development when it was getting really difficult, you know, to make us feel. Better I I'm. Afraid people do. It is a matter of life and death. I did that because I was asked to by the government at the time, and I felt that the local part of the. You know the testing system was not really connecting well enough. We didn't ask for the HS2 project, it was brought to us by national government and we planned our city on the basis of it coming to Leeds.
This is the public Sector Executive Podcast bringing you views, insight and conversation from leaders across the public sector. Presented by Dan Ben.
Today I am joined by Tom Riordan, Chief Executive of Leeds City Council where we will be discussing the COVID-19 pandemic, the environment and the importance of. Transport to a city like Leeds.
So Tom, nice to have you with us today. Thank you for coming on. Broadcast first and foremost, I want to discuss economic growth and development. It's something that's been spoken about a lot and you helped to establish Yorkshire forward. You became CEO in 2006. What benefits did this have on Yorkshire as a county, and why was it important?
The benefits I think it had to Yorkshire. Were assessed properly by uh. You know an independent review and it it showed that for every pound of public money was put in, you got 4 lbs back basically. And that came from a whole range of different things that we did. One was around regeneration and, you know, a sort of place based property based approach to developing towns and cities across Yorkshire. And that led to great schemes like the Sheffield City centre and near the state. And to, you know, Richmond station as part of a sort of market towns approach, it helped businesses hundreds of thousands of businesses actually, particularly during the 2007 crash and when there was emergencies like the floods in South Yorkshire and foot and mouth, you know, emergency sort of ambulance. Like work and then also sort of forward-looking strategic stuff like the green agenda. So lots of different elements to it. But I think the way I would probably sum it up more than anything is that it gave a focus to what is otherwise a brilliant but quite dispersed economy. Where you've got lots of different, you know, cities working separately. You've got lots of different rural areas and coastal areas, but they aren't sort of modern. Some of the parts. So Yorkshire, Ford was there to bind everybody together to get people shouting about the positives about Yorkshire rather than it being a bit missed. In the national economy, if you don't have something like that looking out for it.
So moving on to the kind of current period of your career as chief executive of of Leeds City Council, what drove you to want to take up that role and and how have your skills developed from back then in 2010 to the skills you have now?
I wasn't originally going to go for the job, at least because I'm quite a loyal person and I've been at least 13 years, so I guess that shows I am. I've set up the arch fold as you said, and become CEO, and I was very low to leave at the time. I still feel slightly guilty about it. Well, not guilty about it. But it was the right thing for them and the right thing for me at the time, I think. And you know, Leeds is a fantastic city. You know the Councils are very important and privileged role to get and I wanted to stay in the north. And so in practical terms it was a big job and they don't come up very often. The skills that I've developed I think have been mainly around public services. And going from running an organisation that had about 350 people and you know budget of about £250 million to running an organisation of 15,000 people providing 100 hundreds of different public services to some of the most vulnerable people in the city in the country as well as. Doing all that economic stuff that I've learned as well. You know, I think you know, really learning about I think how to get stuff done, because I did that at yoxford, but it it was at that more strategic level we're saying in York forward you know no one ever died doing economic development when it was getting really difficult, you know to make us feel. Better I I'm. Afraid people do. It is a matter of life and death. Some of the stuff that we do in councils. Children services, you know, adult social care, the homelessness work that we do, you know the. The safety and community work that we do. So yeah, it was really learning about and and having an an extra respect for the people who, you know, provide those public services on the ground for people. And yeah, it's been a fantastic privilege to do that.
We can both appreciate the really important work that councils around the country do. And there was especially a time when the public sector, but also the entire country, the entire world was under immense pressure. And that was during the pandemic, obviously, in May 2010, you agreed to spend some time leading the governments COVID tracing system at a time when the public sector especially, but the entire country was under. So much pressure. How did you find that period of time and kind of what skills did you take from earlier on in your career into?
So yeah, it was incredibly challenging and traumatic at the time for everybody, I think. And I did that because I was asked to by the government at the time and I felt that the local part of the, you know, the testing system was not really. Connecting well enough with what councils were doing on the ground, and we were a big part of the solution. To tackling what was a an unprecedented challenge for all of us, I was actually still doing the leads job at the time that I did that, so it made it even more challenging and I did it remotely so I only went to London three times. Actually, I did it all remotely from. From the north. But yeah, I guess I tried to use the skills I've got about people talking about convening, and I guess winning hearts and minds is what you've got to do a lot in my job, you often don't have the direct power. You've got indirect power. But and I think that's what I had within Whitehall. So I was trying to get the Whitehall machine. To recognise the importance of the Director of Public Health and the almost to mimic the approach that was happening in Germany, which was much more devolved and you know you when you got food parcels to people and you helped once the vaccine rollout was starting, we needed that sort of local system to connect to those communities. That you just can't do from a desk in Whitehall. And I also had to persuade the local government system. To get alongside, you know, the national government and work together and that's what I did, I guess. And within six weeks, we produced for every part of the country a a local outbreak plan with a board chaired by the local leader and with the partners on. And we got half a billion pounds to implement that. And I think it made a. Really positive difference on the ground at a time that it was really needed. So it took a lot out of me. I've got to say personally, it was very difficult to get traction within that very complicated white, tall machine. But we did it and you know, it was testimony to the brilliant work going on from Drexler public health and the care teams on the ground and all the political leaders and all the chief execs and others who got behind that.
Like you say, so much to take away from that period of time. And I mentioned the skills that that you took into the role, what experiences and skills have you taken from that into your career since 2020? That have helped you continue developing in your role.
And I guess I worked in Whitehall in the 90s on international environment policy, so I did understand it and I'd worked over the years with the DA's and local government, with the Treasury in particular, I had we had the lead role with them, so I didn't know how it all works. But I guess being on the inside of it and seeing how at such a time of crisis. You managed to get agreement to things and you managed to get stuff done was an incredibly, you know, precious thing to understand and to. Burn. And so I've tried to take that forward from there to. Be an advocate for local. Government to actually try and help Whitehall work better as well. I've done quite a lot of work to, you know, try and get across better ways of working, particularly through devolution, to try and get alongside the mayors and the. The local authority leaders to make that case. More coherently, I guess to the centre, that's not about just give us this and we'll do it better, but actually we are a crucial part of the country's ability to do things, and I've used that particularly for Whitehall, but also, interestingly, many more national and international private sector organisations have. Gravitated to us in Leeds because they can see that we're doing stuff on the ground on. You know, district heating and net zero or homelessness, where we've got much lower rough sleeping figures or you know, we've built as many houses as anyone in the country in the right places. So we're doing things in a way that is very much in partnership and a whole system team leads, we call it, but it's never the Council that. Is the only one doing it. It's always us with others trying to do it and that I think has been something that I've definitely taken from that period and tried to learn from and, you know, apply even more to what we do.
And I'm. I'm really glad you mentioned at zero then because that was going to take us quite nicely on to our next point. You did mention that you specialised in environmental policy at the beginning of your career. You mentioned at zero then and the work that's being done. In Leeds so. What work is being done in Leeds? What are you trying to achieve? And what you're. Trying to do to to get to net zero and support the. No response.
There's sort of two elements of that for us. So one is the Council itself and the other one is the city and the Council itself. We've been very successful in reducing our carbon emissions by almost half. We've got the biggest electric vehicle fleet in the country in the sector. We've got this district heating system that I mentioned where we use the energy from waste. From our household recycling to basically heat buildings across the city centre, both in the Council estate but also wider, we're doing lots of work with the private sector to, you know, help them to decarbonise as well. So we're facilitating a lot of work on helping the tech sector try and address and solve environmental problems and get lots of startups coming out of Leeds with green credentials, a credit card where you can track your carbon footprint and not just how much money you're spending, for example. So yeah, lots of different elements to what we're. Trying to do we've we've done a lot on retrofit as well of the existing base. We've worked with the UM, one of the utilities, on looking at how we could become part of the hydrogen economy. So yeah, we we'll be announced this week as one of 118 countries who are leading the world in terms of, you know, how we're addressing that net zero challenge by this independent. And body. So yeah, I'm really proud of the work that we're doing there, but there's so much more to do. It is really, you know, difficult actually stuff to to get right. And we're trying to do it in a way that's fair as well and doesn't penalise, you know, the poorest communities in the city. So that's why the district heat. And has helped you know some of our poorest people who live in tower blocks to reduce their energy bills, for example.
Is such an important target, and I think supporting people to achieve that goal is is really important. Moving on to a type of conversation that I think we could both agree has been quite controversial recently. I don't want to necessarily talk about the controversial side as much. But it's transport. A lot has been said when it comes to public sector and transport in recent weeks and months there is still local goals and local targets to be hit and things that you want to achieve with transport. So what kind of impact and how important is transport on achieving your goals so. Things such as net zero and all that.
Yeah, no, absolutely crucial. We didn't ask for the HS2 project. It was brought to us by national governments and we planned our city on the basis of it coming to Leeds. We've built 25,000 homes in the. Last 10 years around the idea that this station would come into the city centre and join our existing one and we've safeguarded 700 football pitches of land to do that, that's now not going to happen and we need to regroup and make sure that we get the benefit of what happens next. But it is a good example of where national government. Visions need to be in line with what you know you're trying to achieve locally. Productivity is the sort of the thing in the north of England generally, and cities outside London that doesn't work as well and. It's not rocket science for us. It really is to do with our lack of a London style public transport system. You know it, if you in Leeds it's harder to get around than it is in London and so we need 2 main things that we're going for at the moment. We need a better park and ride and road system, which we've done quite a bit on and better cycling and walking, so we've. And we've sort of doubled the amount that we're doing in those terms over the last few years, which has been very successful. We've built a new bit of Rd with Parkland around it using our own money and and a very innovative way of raising money from new homes. But the things we need are mass transit system leads to the biggest city in Europe without a tram that now is committed to by. Both main political parties and we need to make sure that that happens and we're starting the work on that, about to consult on the roots it might. Day and the secondary is buses. Buses have been much undervalued in terms of how important they are in helping people get to work, get to run a business, get, you know, get to education opportunities and you know, lots of people don't own a car and don't have access to a car. So we need the buses to be much more aligned. Better. And so there's a the mayor, Tracy Broben, is consulting at the moment about, you know, whether to reregulate the bus system. And, you know, that's something that we're very actively involved in and that we very much support. That question being asked.
Thank you for that. And and I do completely agree that it is essential, especially for a place like Leeds, so kind of moving on, it's all well and good us sitting here and discussing how important transport is, how important it is to achieve net 0. All that kind of stuff, but there is a big underlying issue across the country with the public sector and especially local authorities and that is finances, whether it's certain councils having to issue section 114 notices. Things like that there are problems with the. Where that finances go in with local authorities in terms of leads, what kind of support from the government would you want and kind of how can you maintain achieving these goals that you've got whilst also keeping two tight budgets?
Yeah, it's incredibly difficult. And virtually impossible, I think, to do everything that we should be doing as a Council to make leads the best place it can be under the current. Funding regime. The bottom line is that local government is not funded to do the job that it's been asked to do at the moment and that needs to be corrected either by more money being put in or something changing about our role. And whoever wins the next general election, I think needs to. Address that issue. Are you going to see more section 11 fours and not just for those places who've run into trouble on specific issues. But actually, you know, well run councils will end up in that territory, you know, sooner rather than later. The thing I'd like to see, as well as as a proper funding settlement is, you know, there are some very technical things at the moment that make it so. It's like having one hand tied behind our back. So one year settlements haven't reflected inflation. Asylum arrivals only have time limited financial support. And obviously, people who base themselves here need ongoing public services. Devolution deals are not indexed, linked reserves, messaging is inconsistent. Profiteering happens in children's placements, and health continues to be prioritised over social care and paying grant agreements are delayed. Until the very end of budget processes, so even putting those rather technical things right would actually make quite a big difference to how easy it is to run a council at the moment and provide public services. So I think there is something about the overall pot of money that's available to the sector. That needs to change, or the role needs to change. But also there is a much better way of running and we work together that will make a bigger difference. And you know there's probably more people monitoring what we do in some ways than are actually able to do it at times, given the plethora of different grant regimes that exist on different little pots of money. So why can we not just have a single? Framework to monitor what we do on a single reporting line into Whitehall. To do that properly, that's what we did in COVID. And it worked really well and we built one of the strongest and quickest partnerships between national and local government that we ever seen and it was very effective in getting the testing right and in getting the vaccine rolled out. Why can't we replicate that now would be my challenge as I say to whoever wins the next general election.
Thank you again for joining me, Tom, and giving me some of that really valuable insight, Stan.
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