Poacher turned gamekeeper

Poachers

Sarah Webb

WAS: head of the community housing taskforce, ODPM

NOW: director of policy, Chartered Institute of Housing, since March 2003

“It should be compulsory for civil servants to do a year on the outside,” says Webb.

“The freedom to say what you actually think is great. You are obviously much more constrained when you are a government spokeswoman.

“However, it is a bit scary when you can no longer hide behind the press office – you feel exposed, a bit naked really.”

She has certainly taken full advantage of her new-found freedom since vacating her desk at Eland House 18 months ago. “My old colleagues have said to me, ‘Why on Earth did you say that?’ But where I’ve disagreed with the ODPM, I’ve tried to explain to them why I take a certain position – for example, on decent homes. But I try not to just slag civil servants off for the sake of it – I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end.”

Webb has no regrets about leaving and returning to life as a poacher – she was formerly at Birmingham council.

“At the ODPM I was quite narrowly confined in what I did, but at the CIH I have a much wider scope. However, I wouldn’t swap my experience at the civil service for anything in the world. There is nothing like the buzz of being right at the centre of things. I would definitely go back but I’m not sure if they’d have me back.”

Gerard Lemos

WAS: head of housing advisory group at the Audit Commission

NOW: chair of Notting Hill Housing Group, starting this month

“I don’t want to ever become solely a quango queen,” declares Lemos. “You can get rather detached if you’re in an organisation that’s not on the front line.”

Even as head of the Audit Commission’s housing advisory group, Lemos isn’t in any immediate danger of ivory-tower isolation. He’s just won the chair’s job at his beloved Notting Hill Housing Group and in December will complete the transformation from gamekeeper to poacher when he winds up his four-year tenure at the Audit Commission. He believes a spell on the other side of the fence is something everyone should try.

“The boards of housing associations aren’t exactly on the front line,” he concedes, “but at least you’re dealing with the issues and there’s more unpredictability. There’s something very calm about the regulatory office environment. There’s a cycle, you’re not really shaken up by external events very much. It’s a bit like being a researcher.”

He doesn’t envisage any immediate clashes with his former colleagues as he starts work lifting low-performing Notting Hill out of the doldrums – having come fresh from devising the very regime he must navigate – but he’s hardly known for shrinking from confrontation. “Things might change. If regulatory requirements are not in the best interest of the organisation I would certainly say so.”

Simon Dow

WAS: acting chief executive of the Housing Corporation

NOW: chief executive of the Guinness Trust, since the end of 2000

“There were not too many downsides to working for the corporation,” says Dow, “but one was definitely trying to get ministers to understand that the idea they’d had in the bath that morning would perhaps have some practical problems. Rent restructuring was an example of this.”

Dow has had two stints at Maple House in the 1980s and 1990s but says that, when back on the other side of the fence at Southern Housing Group or Guinness, his contemporaries have been remarkably nice. “People would take me aside to say ‘this isn’t working’ but, by and large, switching sides was attractive because of the varied experiences it gave me. I don’t really understand why more people don’t work for a couple of years at the corporation.

“There are a lot of good things about working there but, having been there twice, I do know that I much prefer working on the housing association side.”

Mike Gahagan

WAS: director of housing, ODPM

NOW: chair of Transform South Yorkshire market renewal pathfinder and board member of Paradigm Housing Group, since April 2003

Gahagan laughs when it is suggested that he is the quintessential gamekeeper turned poacher but, after 37 years in the civil service, retirement meant he finally got the chance to implement some of the policies he had been making for so long.

“I was desperately keen to work on implementing pathfinder policy and it has been very exciting,” he says. However, his time at Paradigm has been even more eye-opening.

“I was slightly surprised by how much notice they took of government edicts. At one board meeting we had a whole session on the Communities Plan. I found it quite humbling really. In the ODPM, we really didn’t think people took all that much notice.”

Would he consider going back? “Oh no, I’ve done my time. But I miss the experience of going out and meeting people around the country. That for me was the best bit.”

I try not to slag civil servants off for the sake of it – I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end

Sarah Webb, CIH

“One thing I do envy people is that when I started in the civil service it was very difficult to leave. Now it is much more easy to switch sides and I would definitely recommend it to youngsters now.”

Gamekeepers

Steve Douglas

WAS: chief executive of Asra Greater London

NOW: regional director for London at the Housing Corporation, since April 2001

“My new colleagues were very interested to know the tricks of the trade,” says Douglas. “So I, of course, revealed the few that I knew.”

He adds that he found the transition from housing association to the regulator “pretty straightforward”. There was never any question of him being a “soft touch” to his former contemporaries at other associations just because he knew what they were going through.

“Asking questions I already knew the answers to felt a bit odd at first, [but] I would definitely recommend moving between sectors, but you should always beware of ‘sector capture’ – where you get too close to your old job.”

Douglas does, however, admit to occasionally hankering after his previous life. “I miss the close contact with tenants that I used to get. I still get some of that by getting out of the office as much as I can but it’s not quite the same.”

Louise Casey

Was: deputy director of Shelter

Now: head of the Home Office’s antisocial behaviour unit, since 1999

Casey hasn’t so much switched sides as straddled the two to become a sharp-shooting, take-no-prisoners hybrid with a distinct campaigning flavour. Of her move from Shelter to the newly formed rough sleepers unit in 1999, she says: “It was a dream come true. With B&Bs, the government took one of Shelter’s own causes. Not only did I get £30m and two years to help councils sort it out, but they brought in a law. You can’t do that much outside.”

Life in the civil service inevitably moves much slower, but Casey has tried to create enclaves of the voluntary ethos within both the homelessness directorate (which emerged from the old RSU) and within her team at the Home Office. “It’s the belief in what we’re doing, in people’s hearts and minds – I’ve tried to set up that style within government. I’m working with a bunch of like-minded people, many of them have come from charities.”

Neither does Casey lurk in the shadows of Whitehall, as many civil servants prefer to do. Whether chatting to residents on estates or addressing packed conference halls, she has a “woman of the people” air that adds an immediacy to her demands for action, whether on nuisance neighbours or homeless families. “I learned that from [director of Shelter until 1994] Sheila McKechnie. You couldn’t work with Sheila without learning about soundbites and how to make people believe in what you’re doing.”

Roy Irwin

WAS: director of housing, Bristol council

NOW: chief inspector of housing, Audit Commission, since October 1999

At Bristol council, Irwin brought in best-value service reviews in 1996, four years before the government caught up. Since he spotted an ad in The Times for the chief inspector post and took “an opportunity I couldn’t refuse”, he’s been able to inspect everyone else’s services as well. It’s been an eye-opening experience. “It’s like The X-Files – all life is out there. When you go into an organisation to see what they’re doing, you’re a fellow traveller. Some people admit they’re not doing so well in certain areas, but some are in a wacky wonderland.”

Removing the scales from the eyes of the “flat Earth society” as he calls them, was always going to come at a price, and Irwin admits his old contemporaries do treat him differently since he joined the government top table.

“It’s inevitable – it’s business. You can’t be a player one day and a referee the next and expect the other players to see you in the same light. There are more important things at stake here. Do I tell them they’re better than they are to stay friends?”

Richard McCarthy

WAS: chief executive of Peabody Trust and chair of National Housing Federation

NOW: director-general of sustainable communities, ODPM, since October 2003

Housing’s most famous poacher turned gamekeeper is Richard McCarthy – so much so that John Prescott described him as such last week to titters from a packed hall at the National Housing Federation conference.

The chief executive job at 16,000-unit Peabody Trust is one of the sector’s most prestigious, but since he moved to the ODPM last October, McCarthy has adapted to his much lower-profile role delivering the Communities Plan to command an expanding empire encompassing the Housing Corporation, English Partnerships and the whole of housing and planning.

Never was the transformation so apparent as when McCarthy watched new NHF chair Richard Clark deliver the keynote conference speech from the other side of the stage. He sat at Prescott’s right hand, supplying facts sotto voce to aid the deputy prime minister during the questions from the audience.

While many poachers turned gamekeepers bemoan the slow pace of civil service life, McCarthy seems to be finding his new role is quite enough to keep him busy: “I was in an organisation that was a delivery agent out in the field, now here I am in government. We’re getting through projects, we’re making things happen. There’s a real sense of urgency across the organisation.”

He’s not completely forgotten his roots though: McCarthy is never without his In Business lapel badge.