Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his Department's policies of the independent governance review of Birmingham City Council undertaken by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny in 2023.

This review provides further evidence in support of the decision taken in October to intervene in Birmingham City Council, appointing Commissioners with powers over certain Council functions and issuing Directions that require the Council to take specific actions to the satisfaction of Commissioners. Commissioners will ensure the improvement actions recommended by the review are appropriately incorporated into the Council’s Improvement and Recovery Plan. The review findings are broadly consistent with the lessons about local authority culture and governance we have learned from statutory and non-statutory interventions, and which informed the draft Best Value Statutory Guidance we consulted on last summer and will issue in due course.