Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council – Progress Review

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council undertook an LGA Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC) in December 2024 and promptly published the full report with an action plan.

A Progress Review is an integral part of the Corporate Peer Challenge process. Taking place approximately ten months after the CPC, it is designed to provide space for the council’s senior leadership to:

• Receive feedback from peers on the early progress made by the council against the CPC recommendations and the council’s CPC action plan.
• Consider peers’ reflections on any new opportunities or challenges that may have arisen since the peer team were on-site including any further support needs
• Discuss any early impact or learning from the progress made to date

The LGA would like to thank the council for their commitment to sector led improvement. This Progress Review was the next step in an ongoing, open and close relationship that the council has with LGA sector support.

The Progress Review at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council took place on Wednesday 8 October 2025. It focused on each of the recommendations from the Corporate Peer Challenge:

• Consider how to unlock the full contribution of partners – they want to play a more substantive role and see the council embedding a ‘co-production’ ethos.
• Be clear about your ‘asks’ of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) and your contribution to the shaping of its effectiveness A starting point could be a clear articulation of priorities for Barnsley’s transport infrastructure.
• Consider how the community empowerment approach can evolve and the borough can maximise opportunities for external funding through the voluntary and community sector.
• Consider a period of active reflection to specifically define future priorities and outcomes for Barnsley. The council has achieved so much but the organisation has expended much energy. There is a need for genuine and real prioritisation plus reflection on the benefits and lessons learnt from key projects and programmes.
• Develop a sharper definition of ‘Enabling Barnsley’ and align resources and capacity to deliver it. Determine what needs to be different to enable a brave, bold and innovative culture and mindset across the organisation and an organisational development plan that addresses the gaps.
• Develop clearer place and inward investment brand identities and a consistent place narrative for the borough.
• Consider how to sustain the stable and strong leadership that has been a fundamental success factor for you. Consider the merits of moving to all out elections. Define the key behaviours and values needed into the future and provide programmes of development for officers and elected members.
• Develop your ambitions around more effectively turning data into insight. Review existing staffing structures so that data roles and responsibilities are better aligned.
• Consider a more regular and comprehensive approach to capturing the views of residents across the borough, including the voice of children and young people. Ensure the views and voices are representative of all Barnsley’s principal towns.

The following members of the original CPC team were involved in the Progress Review:

• Tim Johnson, Chief Executive, City of Wolverhampton Council
• Councillor Eamonn O’Brien, Leader, Bury Council
• Miranda Cannon, Executive Director of Resources and Transformation, Salford City Council
• Polly Cziok, Executive Director of Change and Innovation, London Borough of Merton
• Caroline Wolfenden, Director of Change and Delivery, Chorley Council and South Ribble Borough Council

Action Plan Progress

The council developed an action plan relating to the corporate peer challenge recommendations, incorporating input from staff, which was agreed by Cabinet in May 2025. It was presented also to Overview and Scrutiny the following month. Progress with the action plan is reported regularly to Cabinet and Senior Management Team (SMT). It is also reported to the ‘Enabling Barnsley’ Board that has been established since the corporate peer challenge, featuring representatives from all directorates and meeting monthly. Across the 40 actions contained in the plan, the most recent reporting indicated 38 per cent are complete, with the same percentage being on track. Amongst the other actions that are underway, none are more than three months behind schedule.

It is clear from our time during the Progress Review and from the background reading material provided to inform our work that the council has dedicated time and effort to considering the peer team’s recommendations carefully and is focused on driving many of them forward, whilst also having consciously opted to defer others.

Local partnership working

The corporate peer challenge recommended a period of active reflection to specifically define future priorities and outcomes for Barnsley and for the council to consider how to unlock the full contribution of partners, who indicated they want to play a more substantive role. It also recommended consideration of how community empowerment could evolve, a ‘co-production’ ethos could be embedded and the borough could maximise opportunities for external funding in relation to the voluntary and community sector.

In response, a co-chairing arrangement has been established for the ‘Barnsley 2030’ Board, with representation from both the council and the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust as a key partner. A partner-led ‘Barnsley 2040’ Task and Finish Group was established in May 2025 and this meets monthly. This body hosted an away day in September 2025 which focused on how partnership working has traditionally operated, the ways in which it has been progressing and how it can develop further into the future. The Task and Finish Group is leading the emergent work to develop a ‘Barnsley 2040 Vision’, which will build on the foundations of ‘Barnsley 2030’.

A recent Barnsley Leadership Team (BLT) session explored the behaviour change required in the council to support co-production and community empowerment. The council points to the approach to developing ‘Pathways to Work’, ‘Great Childhood Ambitions’ and the new Health and Wellbeing Strategy as examples of a revised approach to partners. The informal feedback from partners is that they are seeing a positive change in the council’s approach, with an emphasis on co-production and greater opportunities for them to lead. Partners also indicated that they welcome the “honest and challenging conversations” that take place and illustrate a maturity of approach to partnership working.

BLT and SMT sessions have been held on the council’s approach to the voluntary and community sector and the lead officer for the ‘Barnsley Community and Voluntary Services’ umbrella body recently met with BLT. The council has delivered activities to support the sector access external funding, including the hosting of a ‘Meet the Funder’ event with the National Lottery Community Fund; funding a Manager for the Youth Alliance whose remit includes creating links to external funding opportunities; and enhancing co-ordination across the council in developing and communicating funding opportunities with the sector.

Regional partnership working

The council’s leader continues to be influential around the skills and employment agenda with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA). The council’s chief executive is playing a leading role in Integrated Care Board changes and also now chairs the forum of chief executives of councils in South Yorkshire. The new chief executive of SYMCA commenced in role in May 2025 and visited Barnsley at the end of that month. A governance review of SYMCA, being led by its Portfolio Holder for Policy, Engagement and Impact, is seen to provide opportunities for Barnsley. The council has inputted to the review and the findings from it are expected to be available in the coming weeks.

The ‘Barnsley Inclusive Economic Growth Strategy’ was established in February 2025 and outlines three key areas of focus: establishing Barnsley as the UK’s leading digital town; future-proofing the borough’s established logistics and manufacturing industrial base; and empowering communities to thrive. The ‘South Yorkshire Local Growth Plan’ was presented by the Mayor of the Combined Authority in late September 2025 and the council sees “the Barnsley DNA written through it”.

The council is being clearer about articulating its growth ambitions in a South Yorkshire context, which is helping to sharpen Barnsley’s positioning and narrative. A discussion with the senior leadership team at SYMCA is scheduled for later this year to take this further. The council recognises the importance of ensuring that the ‘South Yorkshire Strategy’, which will emerge from the Growth Plan for the region, continues the pattern of reflecting what Barnsley offers and is seeking. The council should be confident in this space.

The council is also working with SYMCA on the South Yorkshire Investment Zone, with Barnsley’s focus being on the Seam Digital Campus and plans for a National Centre for Digital Technologies. Work is in progress to develop the Seam site as an investable proposition, with the potential to become one of the key economic assets within the Investment Zone.

We would encourage the continuation of both the sharpening of Barnsley’s positioning and narrative and the refining of its approach in the regional space. Central to this is ensuring the consistent positioning of the ambitions for the borough in the context of South Yorkshire and the mutual benefits to be derived across that geography, given the importance of the regional agenda at governmental level. There is constructive and regular engagement across the four districts in South Yorkshire in relation to the shaping of the Integrated Settlement.

Community engagement

The corporate peer challenge recommended the development of a more regular and comprehensive approach to capturing the views of residents across the borough, including the voice of children and young people. In line with this, the council has been reviewing its community engagement practices and has sought to co-ordinate community engagement and consultation activity more across the organisation. There has also been elected member development activity around community engagement to develop understanding and spread good practice.

A ‘Welcome to Barnsley’ survey of people who have moved to the borough in the last five years has recently concluded, whilst a ‘resident listening exercise’ has been undertaken in the last few months and was reported to Cabinet in September. Both these initiatives and their findings are seen as important in helping to inform and shape the ‘Barnsley 2040 Vision’. Extensive community engagement around the emerging vision is planned for next summer and the vision itself is expected to be launched in the spring of 2027.

Whilst developments around the Children in Care Council and the ‘Town Hall Takeover’ initiative, which is currently being planned, reflect an increasing focus on the voice of young people, progress around this recommendation was less evident during our discussions.

Brand identities

The corporate peer challenge recommended the development of clearer place and inward investment brand identities and a consistent place narrative for the borough. The council has consciously deferred the work on brand identities in order to enable alignment of it with the ‘Barnsley 2040 Vision’ and the next council plan. The latter of these will emerge following the all-out council elections in May next year.

Whilst the work on brand identities has been deferred, the ‘Growth Ambassadors’ initiative for the borough is being progressed and a ‘Barnsley Growth – Key Messages’ document has been developed to help Ambassadors convey consistent and key narratives. This represents a start to developing a place narrative which will need to go further. Ensuring clarity around Barnsley’s inward investment propositions, informed through strong market intelligence, will be important in helping to facilitate future growth in the borough.

The council has very clearly received the message from the corporate peer challenge team in relation to the council’s branding needing to have a higher profile and be more consistently applied. Work has been taking place on a brand audit across Barnsley as part of this.

Council prioritisation

The council acknowledges that the corporate peer challenge finding around there being a need for genuine and real prioritisation is a longer-term piece of work. However, a revised approach to business planning has been developed and has been welcomed by a range of officers that we met. This has identified six priorities for the organisation and borough:

• ‘Pathways to Work’
• ‘Great Childhood Ambitions’
• ‘Love Where You Live’
• ‘Health on the High Street’
• ‘Enabling Barnsley’
• Public sector reforms

Two business planning away days are being held annually, involving the Cabinet and Senior Management Team, to help take stock of progress and ensure the focus on the identified priorities is being maintained. The same is being undertaken quarterly at meetings of BLT and heads of service. Based on what we have read and heard, these priority areas are seeing a wealth of activity.

‘Pathways to Work’ is acting as a government-identified ‘Trailblazer’ for the South Yorkshire region, with an aim of supporting 10,000 residents into employment over a four-year period. Two thousand of these people will be Barnsley residents. Within the borough, support in delivering the programme has been commissioned from within the voluntary and community sector, including awareness-raising of it.

As part of the ‘Great Childhood Ambitions’ initiative, the securing by the council of free South Yorkshire bus travel for young people from Barnsley is being seen as a great success so far, on a range of levels. This includes 16,000 people taking up the offer and noticeable increases in both bus usage and mobility amongst young people. The school uniform grants offer has been extensively taken up, with 30,000 of the related vouchers being issued. Support packages for those in Year 11 (working towards their GCSEs), including the provision of books and study materials, have been rolled out. January next year will see the opening of ‘Base 71’, the Youth Zone for Barnsley.

The ‘Love Where You Live’ initiative was re-launched in June 2025, with £3m of funding and a focus on bringing people and communities together through social action and volunteering. This has received a further boost, with more than £2m funding for parks and open spaces, which will benefit every ward in the borough, being agreed by cabinet in August.

Under the ‘Health on the High Street’ initiative, the creation of a community diagnostic centre has formed a key element of the wider development and regeneration of the town centre and is seen to be highly valued. This is being supplemented in the coming months with the creation of a health and wellbeing hub at the Alhambra shopping centre and there are ambitions to develop a healthy housing hub too.

Another of the six priorities – public sector reforms – was the focus of a BLT away day in April 2025.

There is increased confidence in the organisation around its approach to communications. This follows the injection of additional capacity to the team. It is important that this progress is built upon and further supports the council conveying messages to its communities regarding what is being delivered by the organisation in line with its identified priorities.

The council is clearly still extremely busy and the progress with the initiatives outlined above forms only part of the picture. We would encourage the organisation, following the May elections and the four-year horizon that this generates, to undertake a period of focusing on long-term planning and prioritisation. The importance of staff wellbeing, in such a busy organisation currently, is a key consideration here.

Governance and organisational development

Of those residents who responded to the consultation, 87 per cent supported the proposal to move to all-out council elections. The move to this arrangement was agreed by Full Council in May 2025. A small number of other changes to the council’s governance arrangements have been implemented since the corporate peer challenge, including a reduction in the number of councillors on committees; a reduction in the number of Overview and Scrutiny Task and Finish Groups; and the merger of the General and Statutory Licensing Committees. Work is actively taking place devising an elected member development programme to follow the elections.

The council’s net revenue budget for 2025/26 was set at £281.7m and the organisation is currently forecasting a spend of £285.5m. The council sees its financial position as stable and there is confidence around meeting the £15m medium-term financial gap that is forecast.

The corporate peer challenge recommended the development of a sharper definition of ‘Enabling Barnsley’ and the alignment of resources and capacity to deliver it. An ‘Enabling Barnsley Strategy’ is being launched in the coming weeks, with four key areas of focus:

• Leadership and culture
• Tools and technology
• Governance and service excellence
• Resources and partnership

The strategy outlines the objectives and guiding principles of ‘Enabling Barnsley’, emphasising co-production; establishing time for reflection; and creating opportunities for innovation and new ideas. A series of Managers’ Conferences focusing on what it means for the organisation will be held in November and December and an ‘Enabling Barnsley’ management development programme and resource pack for managers are being developed. As touched on earlier, an ‘Enabling Barnsley’ Board has been established, featuring representatives from all directorates and meeting monthly. There is a clearer and growing understanding of ‘Enabling Barnsley’ and a sense of energy and drive from ‘Enabling Barnsley’ Board members. Our overall observation around ‘Enabling Barnsley’ is that a clear implementation plan will be important in facilitating its roll-out and adoption.

The corporate peer challenge encouraged the council to determine what needs to be different to enable further a brave, bold and innovative culture and mindset across the organisation and devise an organisational development plan that addresses the gaps. A new organisational workforce plan is being developed for launch early in the new year, along with a workforce planning toolkit for managers. Leadership development activity, facilitated by the ‘T-Three’ organisation, has been undertaken through the summer, across SMT and BLT, focused on a one leadership team approach. From the discussions, this has clearly been received enthusiastically by senior managers. Such development activity is now being extended to heads of service. A further development at that level has been the creation of a network for heads of service, which is meeting on a regular basis.

Some organisational restructuring has taken place to align and co-ordinate activity around corporate performance, business planning and the council plan. The same has been seen with the incorporation of customer, information and digital functions into a new ‘Technology and Innovation Service’.

The council continues to embrace external challenge, including peer challenges in the likes of Public Health and Children’s Services. The corporate peer challenge encouraged reflection on the benefits and lessons learnt from key projects and programmes and the progressing of the council’s ambitions around more effectively turning data into insight. The response can be seen with the development of a ‘test, learn and grow’ approach to aid organisational learning, evaluation and development. This has been piloted with ‘Pathways to Work’, ‘Great Childhood Ambitions’ and the Communities Directorate, with a focus on looking at the use of data and intelligence. Also, the council has been selected as a pilot by the Cabinet Office in the development and sharing of learning around the use of artificial intelligence in Education, Health and Care Plans.

The LGA would like to thank the council for undertaking an LGA CPC Progress Review.

We appreciate that the senior managerial and political leadership will want to reflect on these findings and suggestions in order to determine how the organisation wishes to take things forward.

Under the umbrella of LGA sector-led improvement, there is an on-going offer of support to councils. The LGA is well placed to provide additional support, advice and guidance on a number of the areas identified for development and improvement and we would be happy to discuss this.

Mark Edgell (Principal Adviser) is the main point of contact between the authority and the Local Government Association (LGA) and his e-mail address is [email protected]