Brighton and Hove City Council boss on restructure

Chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council Jess Gibbons wants to “flatten” the organisation by removing and merging senior management roles to push decision making closer to the front line.

The restructure of senior leadership, which was finalised this week following a consultation, has seen a dozen roles at the council axed at a saving of £1.2 million and comes into effect on January 1.

Ms Gibbons, who started as chief executive in March, said the more efficient and streamlined structure will enable the council to better deal with the “wicked” and “knotty” issues it faces including a housing crisis, “stark” inequalities in the city and the fallout from the damning report on Cityclean.

A 17-page report on the council waste service by King’s Counsel Aileen McColgan was published in November 2023 after whistleblowers came forward alleging sex discrimination, racial harassment and other abuses.

Jess Gibbons became chief executive in March (Image: Justine Desmond) Ms Gibbons spoke of creating a “learning organisation which is connected, confident, creative and innovative, diverse and inclusive, healthy and psychologically safe and is one where the council thrives under all future administrations”.

“When I first arrived in the authority a decision had been made before me to deliver £2.4 million of savings through a senior leadership organisational redesign,” the former chief of operations officer at Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council said.

“I arrived and paused that because what I wanted to do was spend some time getting to know this fabulous city of ours but also getting to understand the council, spending time listening and learning from staff.

“But most importantly making any change in the culture we want to create.

“I genuinely believe that the way you get to the future is the future you get.

“The way we do things is what we’ll become.

“I resolutely heard through that process, from officers, from members and residents that we have some great attributes, but we have some great failings.

“And some of the failings are we’re very siloed.

“People feel like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

“The decisions are made without looking at the strategic whole.

“We’re trying to flatten the organisation and push decisions as close to the frontline as possible.

“That will make us much more agile as an organisation.

“It also means the people who understand the issues are the ones that can be making the decisions.

“We have deleted that layer of assistant director and we’ve created director posts but less of them.

“That gives us the strategic space to do the long-term planning and the visioning and the shaping of the city.”

Ms Gibbons said she wants to build confidence within the council, be more creative, innovative, connected and embrace new technology and create an organisation where people can be upfront about mistakes and learn from them.

“We’re a little bit on the back foot in terms of our systems, how we’ve embraced opportunity that comes from technology,” she said.

“It’s as simple as using GIS mapping to understand where our green spaces are and using that as a management tool to be as efficient as possible.

“Using inter-cab technology so we understand exactly where all our refuse trucks are and route planning so we know how effectively we’re going across the city.

“We don’t have those sorts of technologies, so I want to create a structure where we really respond to that.

“The other thing that I really heard through that feedback was we’re a slightly traumatised organisation.

“I think what happened in Cityclean had an impact that went way beyond just Cityclean on this organisation.”

Ms Gibbons said she believes some of the problems within Cityclean happened because the service does not feel “part of the team”.

The chief executive had considered creating a new post of director clean city however this will not be implemented.

Instead, an interim director environmental services will be appointed who will be tasked with continuing the “modernisation and transformation” of services.

Longer term, the service will be merged with environment and culture.

Ms Gibbons is also eager to create more diversity within the leadership team.

“We are really diverse at the frontline in the council but the senior leadership in this organisation is not reflective of the communities we serve,” she said.

“To make the best decisions for the communities we serve we need to understand them and reflect them in our makeup and in our diversity.”

She recognised the redesign will be a difficult time for staff.

The consultation outcome paper shows 38 roles will be deleted and 26 posts created.

Changes include the removal of all assistant director posts and the creation of a new strategic director role and changes to some heads of service.

The council faces financial pressures (Image: The Argus)

Four existing corporate director positions have been deleted and three new corporate directorates created: families, children and wellbeing; homes and adult social care and city operations.

A new central team including people and innovation, property and finance, governance and law will report directly to the chief executive.

“It is about the structure of the organisation and setting ourselves up for success,” she said.

“But going through that means change for individuals.

“We’re conscious of doing this with kindness.”

She said there has been worry about changing roles and different workloads. She said there will be a leadership development programme and training.

“I think people have wanted change and I think the organisation knows itself really well so knew it needed to do this,” she said.

Ms Gibbons said work is ongoing to look at how the council can save further funds.

She said the organisation is waiting for more details about the extra cash for councils that was announced in the Government's Autumn Budget.

“We know we will have to make savings,” she said.

“We know we’ve got to balance the budget over the medium term and that will be challenging.

“But hopefully in the longer term we will see more investment back into local government.”

“What we are trying to do is absolutely protect the frontline.”