Councils drive change and improve lives, says new LGA Chair
Cllr Eamonn O’Brien’s political career started with a food bank.
While at university, he set up the first Trussell Trust food bank in central Manchester, in an area that still has some of the highest poverty levels in the country.
“It showed me how people could be let down by the systems and structures that are meant to look after them; how so many people fall through the cracks and come up against unbending bureaucracy; and how, sometimes, the different systems forget that there are people at the heart of them,” says the LGA’s new chair.
“Rather than try to just treat the problem, I thought I’d look for some way to fix these systems and processes that often let people down. So, when the opportunity came, I stood for election.”
First elected to Bury Council in 2014, aged 22, Cllr O’Brien served as cabinet member for finance and housing for several years. It was, he says, good preparation for leadership, with finance giving him insight into the breadth of the organisation – “a really good understanding of all those pressures and challenges” – and housing providing the depth and understanding of the “real complexities”.
He became leader of Bury Council in 2020 – just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck. “It was a very challenging time. But it reaffirmed my view about the importance and value of local government, because without councils on the ground – doing things, coordinating things, every single day – there was no way central government could have managed,” he says.
“Local government at its best is a massive agent of positive change in people’s lives. Bins, roads and parks – important as those things are – are only a fraction of the impact councils have locally, often with the most vulnerable people.
“Local government is not just a delivery arm of national government. We obviously do want to work in partnership, but we are also very capable of driving change, innovating and improving people’s lives in our own way.”
“We all want to be the best that we can be. Nobody gets into local politics to do a bad job”
While Cllr O’Brien is newly elected LGA Chair, he is not new to the organisation, having worked as a regional lead peer, supporting councils in the North East and Yorkshire & Humber. He feels the LGA’s sector-led improvement support is “one of the most valuable parts of what the LGA offers” and a “trusted and reliable way of resolving issues”.
“Local government has shown repeatedly that it has an ability to challenge itself and to improve,” he adds. “It embraces the ‘critical friend’ and it does so because we all want to be the best that we can be. Nobody gets into local politics to do a bad job.”
Cllr O’Brien says his focus as chair will be on the sustainability of local government finance – and solving the finances requires a fix for social care.
“I think at the heart of fixing adult social care is a new relationship with the NHS and an embracing of public service reform at a neighbourhood level,” he says. “More money is clearly going to be necessary, but local government is at its best when it is driving innovation and change in service delivery to make things more impactful, more efficient.
“That means doing as much as we can to empower our own communities and pull public services together around people, not processes.”
Other challenges include housing and temporary accommodation – “having a secure, safe and warm home is a fundamental part of having a decent life, so we need to be quite radical about this” – and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Cllr O’Brien feels there has been some “really positive movement” on SEND, with the Government’s reforms “an excellent foundation to build even more on”.
Finally, as someone who grew up in the area they represent, he wants everyone to feel pride in where they live. “Once areas start to decline, the problems compound – criminality, antisocial behaviour, social cohesion challenges,” he says.
“Growth for me is not just about statistics and comparisons with other countries, but about bringing excitement, innovation and opportunities back into communities, whether that’s on high streets, town centres or more broadly across city regions.”
Cllr O’Brien is looking forward to working cross-party at the LGA, after experience of doing so in his own council and within the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, where he holds the portfolio for technical education and skills, and clean air.
“It’s another strength of the LGA that it works on a cross-party basis, and we reinforce that every time we speak with a collective voice. We put our places first and not our parties,” he says.
“Of course, there are differences, and we can’t be naive about some of those, because politics has become more divided and challenging. But I remain a real optimist about being able to work together because, ultimately, that’s what our residents want.”
Cllr O’Brien believes new Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s agenda is a “massive endorsement” of what the sector has been saying for a long time – that we need to “bring power closer to communities through devolution, and ensure public services wrap around people and that the benefits of growth are shared as equally as possible”.
“I would like to see the LGA and local government very much at the heart of some of that agenda,” he says, “because I don’t think we want to be a passenger in that journey – we want to be driving it.”