In the week that Birmingham council announced how it was going to bounce back from that vote, Elaine Knutt asked director of housing David Thompson: what went wrong?
David Thompson, director of housing at Birmingham City Council, is a natural in front of the camera. One after the other, he runs through a repertoire of confident – even agressive – poses.

When you consider Thompson's position, the reason for all the non-verbal communication becomes clear. Six weeks ago, Thompson presided over Birmingham council's crushing stock-transfer defeat of almost two negative votes to every one in favour. Now he's left to fight off the critics of his department's strategy, to make a clean breast of his misjudgments, and to lead the team to an alternative (if second-best) solution for Birmingham.

Later on in the interview, there's another moment that demonstrates his willingness to let his body language do the talking. Asked if he thought about resigning when the count came in, his response is to physically walk away from the question. And on his reaction to the defeat, Thompson has trouble finding words to express himself. "Real shock. Real disappointment," he says.

Thompson, 48, arrived in Birmingham 18 months ago, flushed with the success of stock transfers during his eight years at the London Borough of Hackney. In Birmingham, the policy enjoyed a less-than-clear mandate from elected politicians. Nevertheless, Thompson says that wholesale transfer eventually floated to the top of a soup of options as the best means of achieving the government's decent homes standard within a reasonable period.

Although the vote was clearly a personal as much as a professional blow, Thompson felt he had no grounds to resign and is staying to restore a sense of direction to his department. On Wednesday, the city announced an independent commission of inquiry to review the debacle and assess future options. Broadly speaking, Thompson anticipates swapping the centralised, top-down solution of stock transfer for organic, arm's-length alternatives grown from tenant and neighbourhood management.

He also believes Birmingham will find itself at the centre of a government debate about the local solutions he envisages versus the return to centralisation implied in hints about increased borrowing powers for councils. But if he feels caught in the middle of two conflicting policy agendas, Thompson is too much of a politician to say so. "I've got to be very careful to keep a line open with the government. But I think Birmingham has a problem, and so do they."

Before he can bring himself to discuss the future, Thompson wants to discuss the past. "I want to get it off my chest. I've offloaded to friends and family quite a bit, but this is the first time I've talked it through with an outsider." Although he's clearly thought through his mea culpa, and wants it to be public for the benefit of other local authorities, the confession is still accompanied by much forehead clasping and staring into space.

Confusion above, confusion below
The first problem he identifies is the mixed messages that crossed 83,000 thresholds when housing officials visited tenants. On the one hand, officials were not allowed to act as advocates for change and influence tenants' opinions; on the other, tenants' natural tendency to oblige canvassers with pro-transfer opinions over-inflated the department's confidence in the result.

I think Birmingham has a problem and so does the government 

He also feels that Birmingham's ageing tenant population – 40% are classified as "elderly" – voted for a quiet life. "The decent homes standard had no resonance for them. They saw an offer document that meant significant disruption." With only a hint of bitterness, Thompson points out that the government has since said that local authorities can relax the decent homes standard for elderly tenants. "That document is four weeks old. The timing is unfortunate from our point of view."

But perhaps the most crucial factor was that the DTLR required the council to be so transparent about the transfer that it looked to tenants as if the proposal had no clothes on. "You have to base a stock transfer on a 30-year business plan. We identified that 25,000 homes did not justify full refurbishment, and the implication was that demolition was the preferred option. The scale of it – and our inability to be precise about financing their replacements – was a massive issue."

He has a natural reluctance to credit the role of Birmingham's well-organised Unison/Defend Council Housing campaign, but does betray annoyance at how the government played into its hands with last autumn's hints about borrowing for local authorities. "'Wait till 2004 and there will be new funds' is a powerful message. That's enough for them – they don't have to worry about the passing of primary legislation."

If all this sounds as if Thompson fell through the gaps in joined-up government – following the DTLR's policy agenda while it was tying one hand behind his back with technical restrictions and timing announcements to arm his opponents – he will only offer the most coded of criticisms. "At the same time as reflections take place in Birmingham, there must be reflection by central government."

But others can speak for him. Steve Stride, who oversaw a 5000-unit stock transfer from London Borough of Tower Hamlets and is now chief executive of the resulting Poplar Harca, knows Thompson from his time as housing director at neighbouring Hackney. Stride feels strongly that the man he views as "a dynamic, committed pace-setter" was "shafted". "Other people had responsibility for what happened," he says. "To put it bluntly, there was a lack of support from senior politicians and senior civil servants."

Richard Clark, chief executive of Prime Focus Group, knows Thompson well and says he felt for him personally when he heard about the vote. "But he's extremely energetic, very resilient and very capable of bouncing back."

David Thompson

Age:
48
Career:
Studied geography and town planning before starting his career at the Northern Ireland Housing Executive in 1978. In 1987, moved to Birmingham as operations manager, before joining Hackney in 1992.