After an emotional six-month spell at the helm of Manchester City Council, Joanne Roney talks to Heather Jameson about the plans for the city going forward, the importance of community, and the rebuilding work that continues to be done in many social areas
Joanne Roney has spent the last six months as chief executive of Manchester City Council – and it has been something of a rollercoaster.
The 100 Days plan rapidly went out of the window – derailed by the snap General Election and the tragic events around the bombing of the Manchester Arena on 22 May.
While the Manchester terror attack may have dominated the headlines for a few days, it is the lasting impact which has dominated the time of the chief executive.
‘The thing that is forgotten about this is the raids taking place across the city. It was an on-going investigation for about five days. The follow on from that incident, the rebuilding and cohesion, that’s still very live,’ she says.
The We Love Manchester fund raised ‘a stunning amount of money’ for the victims – many of whom have life changing injuries – and the bereaved. It is, she says, ‘emotionally harrowing’.
The original 100 Days strategy – in the form of six priorities – is still on a whiteboard in the chief executive’s office, but her first big test is underway. ‘We are now, as we sit here, being inspected by Ofsted,’ says Joanne. She has had just six months to turn around the service that has been on an improvement journey for three years.
Joanne arrived in Manchester having ‘always loved’ the city and the council. ‘Manchester council was the place you came to when you had a tricky issue and you thought, if anywhere has cracked this, Manchester will have done.’
But she says: ‘In a strange way, I’d underestimated the scale of Manchester. It wasn’t until I was here that I realised just the enormity of the ambition of the city and of the place and how many people I needed to get to know.’
While the Arena bomb ‘accelerated’ her connection to the city, it also highlighted the cohesion of the place. ‘The whole approach Manchester has to social cohesion is really rooted in working with communities. This is very locally based, it’s not led by the council at all… it’s having very genuine conversations with a variety of different communities,’ she says.
‘I haven't seen such community cohesion anywhere else... It starts from a very different perspective which fits in with the Our Manchester approach
It was the Our Manchester strategy – the council’s vision to transform the city, based on a huge consultation – that encouraged Joanne to apply for the post of chief executive.
It is designed to transform the relationship between the council, its partners and the community – and deal with the impact of the reduction in funding to the city. It is top of the list of priorities.
It’s closely followed by working with people and the culture change throughout the organisation – which has seen the chief executive meet up with as many staff as possible in her first six months.
While Manchester has ‘done some things brilliantly’, there are still issues, such as the children’s services and homelessness that Joanne is keen to get right. ‘Homelessness is clearly very visible in the city. It was one of Andy’s [GM Mayor Andy Burnham] mayoral priorities. We have been doing a lot of work tackling street homelessness.’
The Greater Manchester Mayor and devolution deal have lead to ‘a huge change programme’ across public services, which in turn has created a reform agenda, particularly surrounding health and social care. GM has created a single local care organisation, currently in shadow form, reformed commissioning and created a single hospital service.
‘It has really transformed the way we work across organisational boundaries,’ the chief executive explains. ‘It is absolutely brilliant – I love it. Our ability to just get on with transforming services here, under a devolution agreement, is incredibly exciting. You can get your decisions local, but also you get the flexibility of response locally.’
Joanne pays tribute to the players involved, who are all driving the agenda for change, from her own leader Sir Richard Leese – who she suggests is ‘clearly one of the most experienced and brilliant leaders in local government’ – and Andy Burnham, to her fellow chief executives in Greater Manchester – including GM Health and Social Care Partnership chief executive Jon Rouse.
‘The difference is that here in Greater Manchester, integration and joint working goes across all disciplines. It goes down a number of levels and I’ve not seen that anywhere else,’ she says. From social care, to homelessness, to inclusive growth, the city is attempting to stride ahead.
‘We can’t do anything we have been asked to do unless we continue to grow the economic prosperity of Manchester,’ Joanne says. She has just come down from a meeting on the roof to discuss the refurbishment of the town hall and says she was ‘counting the cranes’ on the skyline. ‘That has to be the top moment of the day for me.’
The refurbishment will see the historic town hall close for six years for much needed work – a prospect that is making the new chief slightly nervous. She jokes that she could be known as the chief who closed the building – or indeed for shifting the staff IT system from Lotus Notes to Google.
In reality, thus far she is the chief executive who worked with the new Metro Mayor and who implemented Our Manchester. But, above all, Joanne is the chief executive who dealt with the horrific aftermath of the Arena bombing.
‘As much as I don’t want to define my role by it, it will always be a defining moment in my career. It will always be a part of my life and a part of my heart will always be here,’ Joanne explains.
‘We are keen to capture that which worked well here and say “look what we can do when we harness all of the talents in this city”….that is the thinking we need to put into the next challenge. That’s what we have to put into better outcomes for looked after children, that exact same thinking into harnessing better services for older people.
‘I’ve not met a council employee or a partner that wasn’t affected by that… and we will always hold that, and we have to take the positives out of it.’