Birmingham City Council will struggle to achieve its proposed budget savings of £71 million inspectors have warned in their latest report to Government ministers.

The latest report from the Birmingham Independent Improvement Panel (BIIP) comes in the week that the council’s £180,000 a year chief executive Mark Rogers was asked to leave and just days before councillors meet to vote through the latest round of budget cuts .

And in it’s letter to Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid the Panel concludes that while the budget plans seem solid that they seriously doubt the Labour administration’s ability to stick to them given a poor recent track record.

Failure to make back office savings through more streamlined working increases the likelihood of greater cuts to front-line services like refuse collection, parks and libraries.

It has been rumoured that Mr Rogers, as the council’s most senior official, has been blamed for this poor performance, including the failure to deliver £49 million savings during 2016/17 .

In the report the panel, a group of local government experts, highlights a catalogue of recent failures. These include a major cull of council staff and red tape which was supposed to be in place by March 2016 but ‘never fully implemented’.

The Panel Steve Robinson, Keith Wakefield, Frances Done and chairman John Crabtree

It warns that plans to cut £45 million through further reductions in management and bureaucracy over the next two years will require ‘bold, focused, suitably experienced and tenacious managerial leadership’.

But given that the chief executive has gone and five senior managers are either temporary, acting up or about to retire the panel warns: “A number of forthcoming changes to the corporate leadership team bring the risk of a ‘reset button’ being pressed once again which could lead to further delays in achieving effective managerial leadership team-working.”

BIIP chairman John Crabtree said that while the budget plans are credible they “will not be easy to implement”.

“Some implementation timetables are still extremely ambitious and the risks to achieving fully effective delivery are high.”

John Clancy on the power of misdirection

Responding to the report Labour council leader John Clancy said that the lessons from last year have been learned.

“There is of course much more to be done...but I believe the political resolve and strengthened senior management capacity will do just that,” he said.

Cllr Clancy has been widely criticised for his handling of and lack of communication over the departure of Mr Rogers and ensuing chaos this week.

The council’s Lib Dem leader Jon Hunt said: “The panel’s report is timely in view of the shambles of the last week and next week’s debate on the city budget. It raises very serious concerns.

“The city needs the council to function effectively in these hard times. It is hard to see how this will be achieved.”

The council will vote on the new budget on Tuesday, February 28.