Learn about the borough’s new and leaner organisation

Monday 26 November 2018, 6.30 for 7.00pm

The Small Hall, Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, London W8 7NX

The structure of the borough’s daily operations has changed drastically in recent months. When the new chief executive, Barry Quirk, arrived as temporary chief executive/town clerk shortly after the Grenfell disaster, he found himself leading an unwieldy organisation with too many departments and higher managers, where closely related functions often were in different departments and had very limited collaboration. He saw this fragmented organisation as one of the main reasons behind the council’s slow and fumbling response to the Grenfell disaster.

So when it was agreed that he would stay on permanently, one of his priorities was to create a new and leaner management structure that could respond quicker and more decisively when needed. He presented his plan to the council in September 2017, and since couple of months ago it is in place.

The new organisation means that the chief executive surrounds himself with five small support units (such as Legal, Governance and Communications), while everything else is managed by five executive directors who lead five “service areas” (i.e. groups of departments with related functions) called “Resources and Assets”, “Adult Social Care and Health”, “Children’s Services”, “Environment and Communities” and “Grenfell Team” (the last is a temporary task force). The number of departments and higher managers have shrunk drastically, and many of the departments are new entities created by merging and splitting previous departments.

On Monday 26 November we will have an evening in Kensington Town Hall’s Small Hall, where you will have a chance meet Sue Harris, one of those five executive directors. She heads the largest service area, “Environment and Communities”, which encompasses the seven departments “Planning and Borough Development”, “Transport and Highways”, “Libraries”, “Cleaner, Greener and Cultural Services”, “Community Safety”, “Finance and Resources”, and “Environmental Health”.

She will explain the purpose of the organisational change, and will also talk about the Chelsea Enforcement Pilot (a trial since January to improve the council’s monitoring of building sites, in order to better ensure that rules and regulations are followed and that complaints from residents are dealt with much quicker) as well as its sister trial, the Kensington Enforcement Pilot, which started in June.

You will also be able to ask her questions about anything within her fiefdom, such as CTMPs (construction traffic management plans), construction noise and dust, parking suspensions, enforcement, air quality, cultural issues and much else.

We hope it will be an interesting evening where we will get a clearer insight in how the new organisation is planned to work, as well as get answers to our questions.

Kensington Society members £5.00, non-members £10.00