Brighton and Hove council chief shares her story with business leaders

The chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council shared the story of her journey to the top job with an audience of local business leaders this morning (Friday 25 July).

Penny Thompson, who took the top job almost two years ago, was speaking at a business breakfast at Carluccio’s in Brighton. The event was organised by the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce.

Ms Thompson said: “I didn’t wake up thinking I wanted to be the chief executive of anything. I don’t think I even met a chief executive until my mid-thirties.”

She was born in south London, studied history at university in East London and started her career in an admin job in a social work team at Tower Hamlets Council.

Instead of going back to university to do research, as she planned, she became a social worker.

Ms Thompson studied for a postgraduate qualification in Kent, regularly hitch-hiking up and down the A2 to and from university.

Penny Thompson

She said: “I remember vividly the morning after Margaret Thatcher was elected getting a lift from a Labour agent whose candidate hadn’t been elected.”

This was the first of three phases in her career, she said, working as a frontline social worker trying to help families and keep children safe.

“I learnt a lot about partnerships,” she said. “There was very little I could by myself.

“I found myself making suggestions and being told no. We tried that in 1963 and it didn’t work.”

So she became a manager, took a job in Sheffield and then, in 1987, in Cleveland just as the child abuse scandal there became the subject of a public inquiry.

It was chaired by Elizabeth Butler-Sloss who has just stood down from chairing an inquiry into historic child abuse.

A number of departures followed. Ms Thompson said: “Everybody believed the label on the door which said principal officer child protection. I was trying to live up to it.”

Next she went to Nottinghamshire where the death of a child highlighted complacency and a need for change. But she said: “I found a culture of ‘too good to change’.”

After Notts it was back to Sheffield as director of social services where she was hobbled by a physical injury while coping with another challenge.

“They’d had an inspection and on my fourth day they were put in special measures. It was another change job!

“From there I moved to Hackney (as chief executive) and took over an authority that had an intervention board from government in many departments.

“Then I stepped out of local government and became a consultant for a bit.

“I ended up in Haringay PCT (Primary Care Trust) after Baby Peter had died.

Elizabeth Butler-Sloss

“I became a ‘translator’ between health, social devices and the police, trying to get things back on track.

“But I was missing running an organisation.

“I got headhunted for something called the General Social Care Council with a mission to take it to independence.

“Three months into that job the government decided it should be put on the bonfire of the quangos.

“We couldn’t change the government’s mind so we decided that we would do the best possible job (of closing the organisation and transferring its functions) in the best possible way.

“I wrote a paper for the Department of Health on how to close an organisation well.”

Brighton and Hove offered something different. She said: “I used to visit Brighton as a child when my sister was here when she had open heart surgery.

“Here it was a challenge because it’s a conflicted and democratically lively place. Good people have tried before and haven’t been able to make a go of it.

“This wasn’t a mission of getting to good. It was getting from good to great.

“The potential in the organisation is enormous. It’s got a huge brain and a huge heart.

“This city has got a huge brain and a huge heart.

She said that the council’s mission was to do the very best for its citizens and that it was trying to help the local economy while caring for the most vulnerable.

“We’ve got to make more of digital opportunities and volunteers,” she said.

“Times are changing. The £100 million we’ve got to save over the next five years on top of the £69 million we’ve saved over the past few years – we’ve got to treat it as an opportunity and a challenge.”

The chamber’s next business breakfast is due to take place from 7.45am on Friday 29 August.

The guest speaker will be Brighton Science Festival founder Richard Robinson, who is also the best-selling author of 20 books on popular science.

His latest project is called My Manager and Other Animals.