Commissioner intervention could be 'scaled back' at Birmingham City Council Exclusive - Council is 'finally' making progress after a year 'wasted', according to lead commissioner Max Caller Max Caller will lead a government team of commissioners for Birmingham City Council Government appointed fixers overseeing ailing Birmingham City Council could be recommending a 'reduced intervention' by as soon as July if a 'fragile' recovery continues, we can reveal today. But the council must meet a series of interim objectives before then that show it is capable of standing alone and providing financial stability and better services for residents, said lead commissioner Max Caller. ‌ He praised the 'considerable hard work and dedication' of Labour council leader John Cotton and his cabinet, new managing director Joanne Roney, appointed in September 2024, and her team of senior officers. ‌ READ MORE: Birmingham bin strike talks - council must not cross equal pay red line, warns commissioner But he criticised the council's executives who were in place from 2023 to 2024, claiming the first year of intervention under commissioners had been largely 'wasted'. "This council was not making the progress it needed to make....it wasted its first year of intervention and now it needs to catch up. They are making much more progress now (since Joanne Roney's appointment)." He also repeated his mantra that there is no 'quick fix' to Birmingham's crisis. Article continues below "Some members of council need to stop thinking there is some magic solution. There is no such thing as a quick fix. There never was. It's about hard yards, painfully gained, and embedding change." READ MORE: Meet the most powerful woman in Birmingham on mission to rebuild city and 'transform at pace' Mr Caller spoke to BirminghamLive this week, Tuesday April 29, to discuss the findings of his most recent report to Government, penned in January but only published last month (April). ‌ He highlighted progress on sorting out the woeful Oracle IT implementation programme that is set to cost the council up to £100 million, a better grip on finances, improvements in governance and culture and a stronger 'shared vision' between officers and councillors. But he warned that progress could yet be derailed without a continued focus on key issues. In a robust exchange, Mr Caller responded to our questions with his trademark bluntness, defending the role of commissioners and stating they would not be in the city if the council had not been failing so badly and in financial distress. ‌ Asked why residents should be footing the bill for highly paid officers and then paying the fees and expenses of six commissioners and a political advisor on top - running to around £1 million a year - he responded: "If this council had listened to Kerslake (Sir Bob Kerslake, who in 2014 wrote a report setting out a series of urgent recommendations for the then ailing council) there would be no commissioners now. "But they didn't - they said exactly as you said - why have commissioners when we have highly paid officers? "That's why commissioners are here. That's why (Conservative Communities Secretary in 2023) Michael Gove put commissioners in and that's why Angela Rayner (his Labour replacement) has kept commissioners here." ‌ Max Caller (Image: The Wharf ) He said his report - which you can read in full here - and the published response from Local Government Minister Jim McMahon, had made clear that the work of commissioners was not yet done and they were still needed. "I have highlighted in the report both the things that are going well, the significant milestones and significant risks," he said. And in the minister's response, despite rumours to the contrary, there has been no talk of commissioners departing, he added. ‌ "The council is absolutely changing the way officers think and is starting to respond to members (more effectively). There are parts of this organisation that have not yet realised that the world has got to change...but what I can see is both at political and managerial level that people are concerned about this now and you can notice the change. "I hope to be able to say to ministers at the next six month report (in July) that the scale of this intervention might be stepped down, but that the council's got to keep the progress up and got to deliver the interim milestones." These include: ‌ creating and implementing the next version of the council improvement and recovery plan, due in May launching the City Vision and corporate plan drawing up a robust medium term financial strategy and clear corporate capital strategy "The council has then got to demonstrate that it does the things that it says it's going to do over that period. The council must, absolutely must, have a proper financial and corporate strategy. Those things are signal improvements that, if the council can nail down, then I'll be able to say, six months on, things are starting to improve." He spoke of arriving at a council that was in chaos back in October 2023, after being appointed by then Secretary of State Michael Gove following the council's de facto bankruptcy. ‌ "There was absolutely no work that had been done (to prepare for the next year's budget) so in November 2023 the council was scrabbling around to find what it needed to do." This were similar concerns about the way budget setting was progressing last year. "I was impressed with the effort that the leader and his cabinet member for finance, Karen McCarthy, put in to try to get the officers to do what was required but until Joanne Roney got here and started recruiting a top team that actually understood what was necessary to be done, this council was not making the progress it needed to make," he claimed. "As I say in the report, under John Cotton and his cabinet's leadership, the council was starting to take the right decisions but, until Joanne, the council officer machine was not backing that up with the progress that was necessary. ‌ "The council spent its time up to the General Election (in July 2024) hoping that everything would go away. The new government then directed an awful lot of money towards Birmingham, but that still leaves the mountain to climb. "This government has recognised the problems of Birmingham but the council has still got to deliver high quality, value for money services, it has got to performance manage its services, it's still got to get it right." CEO of Birmingham City Council Joanne Roney talks to Birmingham Live at Shard End library. (Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live ) ‌ In a series of swipes at critics, he took aim at the Sheffield based Audit Reform Lab, who have lambasted the basis of the council's de facto bankruptcy in a series of reports describing an estimated and inaccurate equal pay bill prediction of up to £800 million as a cover for the spiralling costs of the Oracle IT project meltdown. "A lot of time has been wasted, for example, on analysing the Sheffield Audit Lab reports. If you'd have started by thinking the council's accounts were absolutely right and the figures must be something you could trust, which we know them not to be, it might have had more credence, but when you base everything on an analysis of a set of accounts that you know to be incorrect and that haven't been signed off, you question whether or not you should be giving these things credibility." Subscribe to the free BirminghamLive Politics Newsletter Article continues below Caller was also dismissive of claims that the council ought to have secured a better, less costly deal with West Midlands Pension Fund Scheme to save millions. "We've also been told that there's a huge windfall bonus to come from the West Midlands Pension Scheme...when it comes, the council should properly take it into its accounts, but trying to account for and spend it before you've got it is bad, old Birmingham. We're not doing that. "This council needs to still go faster, stronger, quicker, more determinedly. I want them to do that because actually while I love coming to Birmingham, I don't want to be here - I want to be able to let this council stand on its own feet, and be a respected member of the local authority community that it used to be - it used to be the place that people came to learn and they will again."