Ric Metcalfe

By Ric Metcalfe City of Lincoln Council Leader

Most local councils are enduring a financial firestorm ignited by the current government’s policy of reducing public spending with all of the adverse effects on local services.

Local councils have perhaps been thought of in the past as organisations which are slow to or resistant to change and lacking in ideas about how they can do things differently. In other words to adapt to change, to innovate and emerge stronger and more fit for purpose as a result of turning these threats into opportunities.

The City of Lincoln Council has an excellent record over a number of years of change and innovation.

We have used Lean Systems thinking to improve how we deliver our repair and maintenance to our housing tenants, bringing savings and improvements to our services. We have done the same in relation to our planning services to shape the service around the customer, reduce turnaround times for planning applications and make savings to the cost of the service.

Local councils have also been called upon to join together with other councils to make savings by providing services jointly. This is just what we have done with other council’s across Lincolnshire for purposes of buying goods and services increasing our spending power and achieving significant economies of scale.

The City of Lincoln and North Kesteven Councils have a joint Revenues and Benefits service. This is a large, labour intensive service for the collection of all of the monies due to the respective councils and for the administration of Housing Benefit and Council Tax benefit.

Both councils have again benefited from the economies of scale, sharing of expertise and a service more resilient to the peaks of demand for a very heavily used service.

We also have a very innovative Joint Strategic Planning function with North Kesteven and West Lindsey District Councils and the County Council to plan for growth across the Central Lincolnshire area.

There are very few such arrangements around the country, and our own partnership has already yielded results with the recent publication of our core strategy, along with an infrastructure development plan to show what roads, flood defences, schools, health services and parks & leisure facilities are need to properly support the growth we are planning for.

We have innovated in the way the council relates to its many communities in the city, with neighbourhood teams close to the ground and developing the resilience of those communities to endure the knocks that are coming their way with the recession and the long term structural problems that have beset the city over the last 30 years or more.

These have helped make the council less remote and we are getting much better nowadays at how we relate to and consult our council tax payers and service users, making increasing use of online contact and social media for communication and feedback purposes.

Whilst we are not among the furthest ahead among councils on this, we have launched a number of initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint, using electric vehicles, improved energy management measures, increasing use of energy from sustainable sources and are now exploring combined heat and power solutions to the city’s future energy requirements.

One of our major successes at the City Council has been the innovative way we have developed our apprenticeship service, and extended our work in this beyond our own organisation through the use of the Apprenticeship Training Agency. We are also looking at how to extend this further by working in partnership on the Young Unemployed People project, which will develop a hub to support the needs of employers, young people and support services.

We welcome external challenge from all of our stakeholders about our chosen priorities as a council, whether these are meeting the needs of the communities we serve, whether we can do things differently or better.

We know all too well that if we are to succeed as an organisation, we cannot remain as we are, we know we need to change and to innovate, and most of all to engage in a serious conversation with you the community about what we should look like as an organisation in the future.

Help us shape that future.

Councillor Ric Metcalfe is the Labour Leader of the City of Lincoln Council.

By Ric Metcalfe City of Lincoln Council Leader

I am quite often asked as Leader of the City of Lincoln Council what my vision is for the future of the city and then face the dilemma of having to appear either a hopeless idealist or a dullard with no ambition or creativity.

I tend towards the former. I passionately believe it is important to have a clear idea of how you would like things to be and not to have these ambitions over tempered by what is possible in the short-term.

Fundamental to our success as a city over time has been economic growth. If you read history books about Lincoln you will find that the fortunes of the city over the centuries have ebbed and flowed with economic success.

We now, more than ever, need for Lincoln to have a dynamic, resilient, inclusive and carbon neutral economy, but this needs to be sustainable socially, so everyone genuinely shares the fruits of economic advancement and to be sustainable in the way that natural resources are used.

The city has always suffered from being on the periphery, a bit on the “edge”, so connectivity and having some distinctive qualities of creativity and innovation become all the more important for us. A bit like that special shop or restaurant that is inconveniently located but is so good you will go out of your way to get there.

A key part of that distinctiveness that will contribute to our ambitions for Lincoln as a “world-class small city” is its culture, its heritage, its recognition as a place of learning and special character.

We have a world-class cathedral. Although not someone of faith, it never fails, whether inside or out the building, and even after 30 years, to fill me with awe and wonder.

Our fantastic university that continues to grow as a respected place of learning enriching in so many ways what we are as a place. The rest of our heritage; the castle, our amazing ancient Guildhall and the rest of the historic core of the city all compare with the best in the world.

Against the background of our ambitions for growing Lincoln we have to ensure that this growth does not detract from our distinctive character, which is why we envisage that the city will grow through sustainable urban extensions, fitting well with existing infrastructure and avoiding the amorphous sprawl that has become typical of other places.

Although we have high quality environments in Lincoln we want to become a greener and healthier city, with a truly holistic approach to the urban eco-system, and where all of our energy needs come from sustainable sources of energy.

As a council we are passionately committed to playing our part in local action to meet the global challenge of climate change. This is why I am very excited by the possibility of a combined heat and power plant solution to the city’s future energy needs.

We also know that Lincoln is changing. More young people are coming here to study, more people from EU countries are coming here to work and older people are coming here for a high quality of life in their retirement. We need to respond positively to all the opportunities these changes bring.

Above all, I hope Lincoln will be recognised and valued as a city of cultural, generational and ethnic diversity, but one that has made significant social progress and achieved a high degree of social cohesion.

Thinking about the city’s past, Lincoln as a significant centre of military power, as a hugely important place of celebration of faith, as an immensely successful centre of trade, as world-class centre of engineering achievement, we have to ask ourselves: can we be great again?

Are we as a city, together, all of us, able to build a shared vision, reconcile some of the inevitable competing aspirations which will arise along the way, and become a world class small city?

I believe we can.

Councillor Ric Metcalfe is the Labour Leader of the City of Lincoln Council.