John Clancy (Labour politician)

He was particularly known for re-introducing to the U.K. the local authority funding method of Municipal Bonds for House building. These bonds in Birmingham were known as ‘Brummie Bonds”. In 2017 the City Council issued £45 million in Brummie Bonds.^[7][8]

Clancy espoused the concept of Municipal Socialism,^[9][3] with a nod to Birmingham’s Joseph Chamberlain, where a local council becomes an active economic actor in the local economy, rather than being a passive deliverer of services and welfare.

The concept being that by putting the £6 billion of assets and spending power of the City Council, and its presence as an anchor institution of the city, into economic development, the critical welfare services of the city (and reliance on government funding) would be needed much less.^[3][10]

The Brummie Bonds issue was a significant part of the process. Clancy saw this as a part of a wider process of rewiring new local economic pathways and what he referred to as “confident acts of local economic self-determination”.^[11]

He identified the most pressing challenge facing Birmingham to be its lack of housing to meet a fast-growing, young population and the poor quality of much of the social housing which was existing.^[12] He proposed bringing in the council’s and other wealth from global capital into meeting the need to kickstart a massive house building programme and building council houses at a scale not seen since the 1960s.^[13][10]

Clancy led a number of overseas trade missions to sidestep U.K. and Government funding shortfalls to fund house-building and economic regeneration. In particular he signed a £2 billion agreement for investment in housing in the city with Guangdong-based developer Country Garden during his week-long trade mission to China.^[14][15][10]

Utilising the wealth of the West Midlands Local Government Pension Fund to invest in the city and its region was also a frequent policy call as part of local economy rewiring.^[10]

He identified the Fund as draining assets and resources away from the region and in particular challenged its calls to local government in the region for extra funding to pay down what he termed illusory deficits whilst they were making cuts to services due to central government cuts. He demanded cuts to the fund’s bills to the city council, and managed to negotiate them down considerably by £24 million in one year according to local media.^[16]

After criticising the size of the budget pay-outs to outsourcing giant Capita through the City Council’s outsourcing Joint venture Service Birmingham for many years,^[17] Clancy announced the ending of the joint venture in 2017 and a wind-down of the relationship saving the City Council £43 million over 4 years.^[18][19]

These two renegotiations enabled Clancy to shield the city from £35 million of further cuts to the city’s services in the first year of their effects.^[18][16]

Shortly after he became council leader, Clancy was responsible for the decision voluntarily to move the failing Children’s Services department at Birmingham City Council into an external trust in May 2016.^[20] After being judged as failing in successive government inspections since 2008, he said there had been "some progress" but it was "not sufficient enough for us all to be satisfied children are safe in this city". However, Clancy said it was still a facing a "huge challenge".^[20]

Speaking at the time Clancy remarked of the challenge that it was “the biggest challenge in [British] politics, certainly in local government terms.”^[20]

Apparently vindicating Clancy’s decision, three years later, the services were finally judged no longer to be inadequate.^[21] The Children’s minister at the time Nadhim Zahawi described Ofsted's judgment as "a significant milestone".^[21] During Clancy’s leadership period there were no deaths to children in care at the council due to neglect.

Clancy has written extensively on public sector pensions and is regularly quoted in the U.K. national media on the subject.^{[22][23][24][4][25][26]}

His research work at Birmingham City University is based at the Centre for Brexit Studies,^[2] and the Centre for Regional Economic Development and Investment (CREDIT).^[27]

During the BREXIT process Clancy questioned the status of the EU Commission’s unfunded Pension Scheme and whether the U.K.’s liability for future payments post-BREXIT were accurate or existed at all.^{[28][29][30][31]}

His book The Secret Wealth Garden - rewiring local government pension funds into regional economies (2014) introduced to a wider world the area of U.K. Local Government Pension Funds.^[4]

He was C.E.O. of Pension Fund Analysis Limited.^[32]