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Communities secretary, Eric Pickles, has attempted to end ministers' war of words with councils by praising their reaction to deep spending cuts – and immediately launched into another attack on town hall pay. In an exclusive interview with The MJ, the forthright communities secretary confronted head-on concerns over his stewardship of local government, following accusations ministers' relationship with councils had collapsed under the stress of the sector's financial hardship. Eric Pickles: Conciliatory views on the sector were not matched by his views on chief executive pay Further evidence of troubled relations emerged this week, when the Labour leader of Nottingham City Council, Cllr Jon Collins, described Mr Pickles as a ‘buffoon' and housing minister Grant Shapps as a ‘fool'. It followed Nottingham's failure to meet this week's deadline to publish online council spending above £500. Mr Shapps, meanwhile, lambasted the Audit Commission for ‘forgetting its job is to protect the public purse', after revealing the watchdog spent £53,000 on office chairs. Both incidents reflected months of unrest within town halls and the Local Government Association (LGA) over ministers' candid, often critical, leadership following Whitehall's decision to front-load council spending cuts of 27% by 2015. Cllr Richard Kemp, leader of the LGA's Liberal Democrats, recently urged deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, to remove the two most senior Conservatives from the DCLG –dubbing them ‘Laurel and Hardy'. Mr Pickles acknowledged his dialogue with councils had been ‘robust', and accepted that Whitehall's approach to a difficult spending period had irked some senior figures. ‘People get agitated and irritated, and I do concede that we can be a tad annoying. But one form of government talking to any form of government is annoying,' he told The MJ. Inferring he enjoyed calmer relations behind closed doors, he added: ‘There is a world of difference between what people say in the press and what they say in private. I'm not talking about them being duplicitous, or anything like that. But we do see a lot of leaders, and we do chat and listen to them. ‘We've listened to them on the way the grant should be calculated, and we've listened on wanting to protect the most vulnerable authorities.' Mr Pickles said he remained a ‘massive fan of local government', and pointed to his record of delivering wide-ranging powers, including the general power of competence, through the Localism Bill. And he praised authorities' response to swingeing budget cuts following the recession. ‘Local government has stepped up to the plate. A number of authorities have been grandstanding, but most haven't. The truth is, we all knew this was coming – it would have come under Labour – and most authorities had prepared for it,' he said. ‘I've been impressed by what I've seen. By and large we haven't seen shocking mass redundancies, and a number of authorities, such as Reading, have protected the voluntary sector and been sophisticated.' But Mr Pickles was unashamed in his pursuit of wage cuts for town hall officials. He said people had misunderstood his rationale for urging chief executives, for example, to follow his lead in taking a 5% or 10% pay cut. ‘I don't think a chief executive taking a pay cut solves the problem of wider cuts to council budgets. But it is symbolic,' he said. ‘It's not personal. It's just, I think there's a cadre of top officers whose salaries are wholly disproportionate for what they do. The [public sector] good times were absorbed into this over-burgeoning management. They've kind of taken on the worst aspects of the private sector, without any of the benefits.' LGA chair, Baroness Margaret Eaton, last week said it was ‘dishonest' for ‘certain politicians' to ‘peddle the view that top officers in local government are causing the financial problem'. Responding to Mr Pickles' latest comments, one council executive said: ‘Hopefully this is an end to the name-calling from both sides. It's a shame Eric appears not to value the work of some excellent managers. ‘It's refreshing to hear him praise councils for a ‘sophisticated' response to cuts. I just wish he'd understand managers played their part in that.'

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Exclusive: Pickles seeks to end war of words with councils

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