When Lin Homer became chief executive of Birmingham council, it was reeling from a resounding transfer 'no' vote. Now, 18 months on, she tells Mark Beveridge how it's come a long way – and where it's going next.
It's just before eight in the morning and I'm waiting at the door of Birmingham's vast Victorian town hall. It's taken months to secure an interview with the woman who has possibly the biggest job in local government: Lin Homer, Birmingham council's chief executive. The problem is, no one's around to let me in, so I'm wasting valuable minutes from her busy schedule.

Homer has long been in demand. Birmingham snapped her up after she helped Suffolk county council obtain a record five "beacon" council awards. In agreeing to join Birmingham, however, she accepted a new challenge: to reverse the vast council's record of poor performance.

Time might be precious to Homer, but the pressure doesn't seem to be a problem. She is reputed to be one of the hardest-working chief executives around, but when asked about her workload, modestly dismisses suggestions that she overworks. "It would be shameful of me not to put in as much effort as some of the council's front-line staff. But I'd hate to think I didn't promote a sense of work-life balance," she says.

Despite Homer's presence since July 2002, it's been a turbulent time for Birmingham. That summer, the city was starting to come to terms with its infamous, failed transfer ballot; ever since, the housing department has been the subject of an inquiry and, last September, it received its second zero-star inspection rating for repairs.

But Homer says real progress is, at last, being made. Just 10 days before the council's 31 March deadline for clearing its backlog of 48,000 repair jobs, she is optimistic that it will have succeeded – and indeed, when the deadline arrives it only falls short by 1000 or so jobs. That's a tremendous turnaround for housing services, given that only six months ago the Audit Commission almost recommended external intervention. And the council hasn't abandoned the decent homes target. In March, it unveiled a housing strategy that claimed it needed to find an extra £165m before 2010 – a smaller amount than many had predicted.

Nonetheless, the task remains massive. Birmingham is, Homer says, an "extremely complex" city – which is why she's working to link improvements in housing with progress on other services and to give council tenants a greater role in housing strategy.

One of her deputies in the housing department recently suggested that it would not make financial sense for Birmingham to meet the decent homes standard across all of its 65,000 homes as many are in areas where all types of accommodation are hard to let. But Homer denies that more money is needed for regeneration. "No, I'm not going to give you a quote that it would be all right if government gave us more money," she says. "There's never enough money in a city like Birmingham but we've got a lot of resources and before we ask the government to throw lots of money at us, they could properly ask whether we're aligning the resources we already have."

Flourishing neighbourhoods
Personable and professional, Homer gives the impression of talking freely even when using measured, diplomatic language – perhaps the result of starting her career as a lawyer. But she does have a mantra: aligning resources and making sure that the council's services are "joined up". Birmingham's strategic plan is to create a city of "flourishing neighbourhoods" underpinned by the council's delivery of a services "that allow people to lead successful lives", she says.

"It requires us to produce a range of services that suits local people's needs. When you start planning services in that way, you don't improve housing in isolation to everything else, you look at a community and ask what is needed to make it flourish. And that's partly about the schools, partly about the transport and the supported housing and so on."

This approach has also given momentum to plans to devolve control of the councils' services to 11 constituency areas as soon as possible. Given the council's experience of stock transfer – which led to criticism that its tenants were being offered no real choice over the future of their homes – Birmingham is particularly keen to ensure that control over housing is decentralised. Doing that, however, is bringing the council into conflict with the Government Office for the West Midlands over the requirement that it complete its stock options study by July 2005.

Obviously the council wants to comply, says Homer. But she is opposed to the idea of hurrying tenants to make up their minds without going through the same amount of consultation in each area.

"With the best will in the world we can't complete the community-centred housing approach by 2005," she says. "Four of the 11 constituency areas will have probably made it through the detailed options appraisal process and come up with high-value plans by 2005. We think these appraisals will be among the best, most locally owned in the entire country. What do we do with the other areas? They won't have been through the process, so do we predetermine their future and say we'll decide for you?"

The city is hoping the government office will agree to a compromise that would let it put forward provisional results for areas that had not completed a full appraisal.

"We have firm plans for some areas and we've got views for the rest of the city, but we'd like more time to test them using the same process," says Homer. "We're having some very useful discussions with the government office about how, within the conundrum of stock options, we can comply with the statutory requirements," she adds.

Staff changes
After months of speculation in the sector Homer can confirm the future of Birmingham council's housing staff . When the Audit Commission's damning inspection report was published last September, two troubleshooters – David Hucker and Michael Irvine – were brought in on temporary contracts, the former to turn around performance on repairs and maintenance, the latter, housing strategy. That division of labour is now to be formalised: Irvine is to stay for another six months, and the council should begin advertising for a director of landlord services this week. Hucker, who masterminded the council's attempt to clear its repairs backlog, is to join the housing team at consultant Ecotec.

Does Homer find the interest in the housing department – which has been widely criticised in the local press – unusual? Her experience is, after all, mostly at county level. She was chief executive at Suffolk for four years and, before that, deputy chief executive at Hertfordshire county council.

"The politicians in Suffolk and Hertfordshire were pretty lively and had strong opinions, so I was well prepared for the politics of Birmingham," she says.

Even so, the city has a reputation for the influence wielded by its councillors. Does that cause her any problems?

"I always wanted to work for a council where the members run the show – it gives the place a buzz. Birmingham's been brilliantly run over the years," Homer says, stretching credibility ever so slightly.

"You have to visit this place to see the scale of the transformation that has taken place. Remember the history of this city. In the mid-1980s in some parts of the city, 50% of people were unemployed. Compare that to where we are now."

Lin Homer

Age
46
Family
Married with three daughters
Education
Law degree at UCL, qualified as a solicitor in Reading.
Career
15 years at Hertfordshire county council; chief executive, Suffolk county council, 1998-2002; chief executive, Birmingham city council, since July 2002 She says ‘It gives me a real buzz to be involved in delivering services to people – there aren’t many private sector companies that can do that.’