External auditors praise Sandwell Council giving leader chance to look to "next phase" of its future

The Grant Thornton audit report noted there was‘significant progress’ has been made on issues raised last year.

The report said: "The Council’s Improvement Plan has been key for creating and maintaining a focus on the required improvements, and the Council has made significant progress on many of the recommendations made in our previous report.

"The Council has put in place the foundations to deliver the sustainable improvements that are needed, and significant improvements are already being made."

Grant Thornton visited the council during September and October with the results being presented at this week's cabinet meeting.

In a letter to council partners Councillor Carmichael said: "Since then, further progress has been made as Cabinet approved our medium-term financial strategy and asset management strategy in November. The Council also approved constitutional changes in November and ratified the appointment of a permanent chief executive, Shokat Lal.

"I am pleased that the report also concludes that we have made progress in building more effective relationships with our partners and stakeholders."

She added: "Shokat will join us in February, and I know he will look forward to working with you to build on the progress made over the last year. We recognise there is still work to do in putting the customer front and centre of our business, living our desired organisational culture, embedding our changes so they achieve the desired impact in a sustained way, and building continuous improvement into our normal business.

"This will be the focus in the next stage of our journey."

The report praised the council for "making better procurement and commercial decisions" including reviewing the SEND Transport procurement decision as well as other structural changes. The review also praised children's services which saw its Ofsted rating move from inadequate to requires improvement to be good.

Councillor Carmichael is now writing to the Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on behalf of the council. Separately, the Commissioners will be providing their six-monthly update to the government by Thursday 22 December following their recently published monitoring report from June.

She added: "I want to take this opportunity to wish you a happy Christmas and look forward to continuing to work positively with you in the New Year to ensure the sustainability of the improvements made so far."

The Government were forced to send commissioners to help run the council after several years of instability caused by infighting in the controlling Labour group. Blackheath Councillor Kerrie Carmichael was the sixth leader in three years when was elected to lead the authority in December, 2021.