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Five years after commissioners first arrived at Liverpool City Council, the bit of formal government oversight has gone.Children and families minister Josh MacAlister lifted the improvement notice on its children's services, brought in after Ofsted judged the service as inadequate in 2023.Liverpool's good rating comes just as the city, bathed in sunshine, welcomed delegates for the Labour Party conference – not least the first Liverpudlian Prime Minister since Gladstone, Andy Burnham.The Ofsted judgement is a huge milestone for chief executive Andrew Lewis, who arrived in 2023, just as the service was judged as inadequate, and when the council was already in intervention.Lewis explains: ‘We've probably gone from one of the lowest points that any council can reach to… being recognised as a bit of a flagship within the local government sector.‘We've gone from being essentially an organisation seen as a problem to one that is now recognised as an opportunity for the future.'Lewis is keen the council does not become the ‘poster-child' for intervention. It came out of intervention in ‘less time than perhaps people might initially have expected' in 2024 with commissioners concluding it was a well-governed, improving organisation.Liverpool has always had a bit of a chequered history, from the militant days of Derek Hatton in the 1980s and 1990s to the arrest of the former chief executive Ged Fitzgerald and others under Operation Sheridan in 2013.But when former Mayor Joe Anderson was arrested alongside five others, including Hatton, in 2020 as part of Operation Aloft, an investigation into building development contracts, it triggered a best value inspection and subsequent intervention.Lewis suggests it was a ‘rocky ride'. In 2022, commissioners reported further failures and the then secretary of state Greg Clark widened the intervention from property, regeneration and highways to cover finance and appointments.‘It was only after the first two years that we started to take more responsibility at local level,' Lewis says. When he joined the council in 2023, taking over from Commissioner Theresa Grant, he recalls: ‘We had 80% of our senior management team as interims or… consultants and now we've got a sort of fully staffed senior team, very committed to the future of the city.'Lewis is keen the council does not become the ‘poster-child' for intervention. It came out of intervention in ‘less time than perhaps people might initially have expected' in 2024 with commissioners concluding it was a well-governed, improving organisation.He tells The MJ: ‘It [the intervention] was absolutely necessary because of the governance failures that were very clear at the time and it was a positive process for us overall, no question.'He is complimentary about the commissioners, claiming the council was ‘very fortunate to have a very collaborative and supportive chair in Mike Cunningham'. But he is candid about government intervention and suggests the process is ‘problematic'.‘It removes local democratic accountability for a period,' he states. ‘We've been really pleased to then move beyond that and set up our own arrangements that are very much in the hands of our local political leadership, which is where accountability needs to sit.‘It's not something any council would want to experience. It's a denial of local democracy,' he suggests. ‘The commissioners are in the building directing activity day-to-day and that doesn't create much space for self-improvement.'Ministers, he suggests, have moved away from commissioner-led intervention towards envoys and reinforcing local leadership, based on how other struggling councils have been handled since.Despite the progress, Lewis warns against complacency. ‘The process of improvement is not linear and things can go backwards as well as forwards.‘We never take it for granted. We talk about milestones, not endpoints. And there will always be bumps in the road.In addition to children's services improvement, he says there have been ‘very significant improvements in resident satisfaction and staff engagement' and a more confident relationship with government.With intervention behind it, the council's focus has shifted to growth and devolution. This week it announced a mayoral development corporation for Liverpool North Docks, which Lewis calls one of the most exciting regeneration schemes in Europe.He claims the relationship between councils and strategic authorities is ‘absolutely critical' to making devolution work. ‘The capacity doesn't exist solely in the combined authority. It has to be through a partnership… we consider ourselves part of the combined authority, not separate from it.'Having worked on devolution for more than 20 years, he calls the Government's Rewiring the State document ‘absolutely revolutionary', but warns ‘there is an awful lot of detail to work through'.As the bustle of the party conference fades, Liverpool is looking forward to becoming host city for Euro 2028. Lewis says: ‘We want to be about the future and what we can do as a result of the improvements we've made.'

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IMPROVEMENT

Liverpool's recovery: how a council moved beyond intervention

By Heather Jameson | 08 October 2026

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