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Having spent his entire career at Derbyshire CC, Nick Hodgson explains to Heather Jameson what makes the county so different from other places. The chief executive of Derbyshire County Council, Nick Hodgson, is somewhat quiet and unassuming – and he seems bemused that The MJ would want to talk to him at all, despite his stewardship of a large county authority. Derbyshire chief executive Nick Hodgson He begins by explaining how dull he is, having spent his entire career at the council. ‘We tend to just keep our heads down and get on with it,' he says about his equally-unassuming authority. But, he must be doing something right. Derbyshire has one of the ‘lowest increases in council tax' and highest levels of satisfaction around. Nick joined the council in 1975 as a town and county planning assistant, having completed a degree in town planning at Manchester university. ‘I made a mistake. I should have gone for a district,' he says, since district planning issues would have been more interesting. Nevertheless, his career doesn't seem to have suffered from his choice. In the early 1980s, he swapped town planning for corporate planning. He went through the policy unit on to being assistant then deputy chief executive, before taking up his current post in 1997. And while it may be a quiet authority, Nick is not averse to celebrating success. He has also been known to fight his own corner. Derbyshire and Lancashire have both been targets for reorganisation in the past. ‘We and Lancashire took the Government to the High Court. We got a result for Derbyshire and Lancashire, – and we got a result for county local government.' He says: ‘It [Derbyshire] does feel like my place. It feels very much like I've been here for life. Well, I suppose I have been here for life.' But he claims it is important not to take things for granted. And he is keen to stress that it is a team effort. He claims his job is more about ‘managing relationships' than it is about running the authority. If staff get the ‘relationships and friendships' in place, both internally and externally, everything else follows. There is what he refers to as ‘The Derbyshire way'. It's not just a case of being proud of the place one belongs to, and being committed to making it better. ‘It's about trust and honesty. It's about treating people how you would like to be treated – saying thank you and giving praise. And it's about having a no-blame culture,' he says. The authority was described as ‘excellent' in the 2002 CPA results, and has never looked back. Nick says he is not against the inspection regime. In fact, he is a real supporter of peer review, in particular. He says: ‘I'm the first to volunteer for inspection. If it's done well, we'll get something out of it. But I would rather members of the public here judge us. I'd rather members judge us.' And while the authority is not always at the forefront of innovation, he claims: ‘It may take us longer to get there, but we will get a lot further.' Although he is speaking before the general election, the writing is already on the wall for the future, and the lack of funding to come is at the forefront of his mind. ‘The big issue is how fast will the cuts come.' But he is not fazed, and adds: ‘The cuts we faced in the 1990s were far worse than anything now.' The authority already has a programme in place for the next five years. There are £60m efficiency savings identified and the authority is just introducing new finance and HR systems which should help with the efficiency programme. ‘We will try to manage it without any compulsory redundancies,' he says, relying instead on ‘natural wastage, with people retiring, leaving and possibly retraining. His reluctance to make redundancies is in keeping with his supportive outlook on his staff, but Nick is by no means certain it will not become a necessity in the tough times ahead. But then, redundancy just wouldn't be The Derbyshire way.

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WHITEHALL

The Derbyshire way

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