0 Birmingham may be England's second city, but its local government work is first class. Polly Botsford paid a visit


Serving the second city in England, a metropolis with a population of more than one million souls, Birmingham City Council has rather a lot on its plate. ‘It’s effectively like running a country,’ says Mirza Ahmad, head of the council’s legal team.



He has a point: the largest local authority in the country must cover an area comprising ten parliamentary constituencies, and needs a budget of over £3 billion and an army of 60,000 staff to do it. It is not surprising that the council's legal team is also the largest in the UK – and perhaps even within the EU – boasting 320 staff, more than half of whom are fee-earners. The Birmingham legal team deals with hundreds of queries from every department of the council, handling an average of 10,000 new cases each year.



Ahmad, the chief legal officer, has led the team to prominence, winning numerous accolades and awards including Legal Team of the Year in Local Government Chronicle’s Excellence Awards. But the vastness of the council only partly explains why the team is so big. It was not always this way – it was only half its current size in 2000. The reason headcount has doubled since then is that the team has been developed by Ahmad into a comprehensive, more self-reliant legal department, serving all the council’s departments as well as 120 council members.



Ahmad’s private office is immaculate, with none of the paper carnage one would expect given the enormous scope of his role, a role that includes responsibility for the legal team, the regulatory department and the council’s corporate governance. A barrister by training, with 20 years’ experience in local government, he has won a number of awards in his own right over the years. It is indicative of his modesty, though, that the walls of his office are not adorned with gold-embossed certificates. The gongs were topped off this month when he was invited to receive an honorary doctorate in law from Manchester Metropolitan University for his valuable contribution to the legal profession. ‘This is a great personal achievement for me, and, being a lawyer in a family of doctors, it means I’ll now be able to join them,’ he quips.



The legal operation is spread out over three offices, providing legal advice on all areas where the council has responsibility, from mental health work through to landlord and tenant. Within the team there is a balance of solicitors, barristers and legal executives. There is also a ‘democratic services’ division, which supports the council’s cabinet and various committees.



The size of the team would not be unusual in a private practice, but a brief glance at its mission statement is a reminder of what distinguishes this public-service provider from the private sector. It states that the team is aiming to ‘make Birmingham a better place in which to live, work, play and do business’. What that means in practice, says Ahmad, is that the team ‘must have the citizen in mind’.



‘The client is the one who has to deal with the citizen, so we are there to help the client do that,’ he says. To take a real-life example: if a legal adviser is confronted with an issue relating to anti-social behaviour, they should, he says, be considering ‘the wider agenda’ and not analysing the problem in legalistic isolation. Therefore, they should not only ensure the order is obtained and executed promptly and properly, considering alternatives such as a civil injunction instead, but also work with the relevant public organisations. In the case of an ASBO, that means the police.



Clearly, the public-service nature of the work underpins the team and its goals. But Ahmad also has an MBA and an eye for more business-minded objectives, such as high efficiency.



After taking on the role of chief legal officer he reformed the team internally and redesigned the way that it uses external sources – solicitors and barristers. As a result, he has reduced the amount spent on external professionals ‘by millions’, he says. But he does not believe in paring external sources to nil. Like the Director of Public Prosecutions – who announced in an interview with the Times recently that he wants the CPS to take more work in-house, aiming for around a quarter of all Crown Court cases to be dealt with by CPS advocates – it is about having a balance.



‘Complete self-sufficiency is not a realistic objective,’ he says. ‘We recognise the strength of having in-house and out-house teams, and that mix fluctuates depending on the work.’ Nor is this just a practical point. ‘I don’t believe in the monopolistic supplier. It becomes self-indulgent and complacent. The service side suffers, the client suffers.’ He has, instead, set up a formal tendering process and external panel for the team’s external providers.



As chief legal officer and the council’s monitoring officer, Ahmad has also become the authority’s corporate governance guru, ensuring members and staff do things by the book. But, contrary to what one might think of those roles’ necessary qualities, one of the reasons it appears he is successful is that he is not dogmatic. ‘I’m not a stickler for rules,’ he says. ‘Being part of an organisation like the council is about needing to know when and how you can go around the rules. You can’t get away from them, but you can use the rules to serve the city.’



Because of his skills and experience in corporate governance, Ahmad has taken responsibility for the council’s Code of Conduct for Members. If a member breaches the code, they could be disqualified, but Ahmad is proud of Birmingham’s good track record in this area: ‘Though nationwide there have been around 50 disqualifications [of members], we have had only one breach case, in 2003, and only two very recent additional breaches, one of which is being appealed by the member concerned.’ On the whole, Ahmad wants fewer rules. ‘Local authorities need to be liberated from these rules. We need a more flexible approach, so that local government has some room to manoeuvre.’



On the back of his experience in corporate and ethical governance, Ahmad is hoping to have his role extended to become corporate director of governance, in charge of the election and scrutiny offices and the cabinet. This would make him responsible for departments with a total of 1,000 employees, but he does not seem fazed by the numbers.



In the meantime, Ahmad remains enthusiastic about life as a local government lawyer. ‘It is a great career opportunity. There is a clear linear career structure, which you can lock into, and we are “all-purpose” – we cover all areas. But because you are going into a family of local authorities, our staff can move around.’ Staff can be seconded from one service area to another, but also, Ahmad says, ‘they can even go into other services, like the health services – we have just had two litigation solicitors join the Treasury’.



Local government lawyers also have the opportunity to realise something that most corporate lawyers only dream about - a work-life balance. All Birmingham City Council employees, including the legal team, work flexitime, where employees can choose the hours they work (within defined limits). As Ahmad says: ‘I am less concerned about people sitting in an office – I am more concerned about the work.



‘If an employee has to work from home because childcare has fallen through, I would rather they stayed at home. It saves them travelling in and out for two hours, it saves energy and fuel, so there’s a green element too. If the work gets done, then this is all to the good.’



But that is not the crux of the attraction of being a local government lawyer, says Ahmad. ‘Of course, you get to use the tools of the trade and get excellent experience, but they are serving the public, which is the greatest benefit of all. I would encourage lawyers to look at the local government market and look at what contributions they can make in improving people’s lives.’