Oldham's Fix for Having No Leader Passed 46 to 1. Its Own Chief Executive Told Councillors It Still Breaks the Law.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
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In short. Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council voted through interim governance arrangements on 16 September, after five failed attempts since May to elect a Leader [1]. Local press reports put the vote at 46 in favour, one against and four abstentions, after a 50-minute adjournment [3] [4]. Chief executive Shelley Kipling told councillors, on the record, that the arrangement "will not negate the unlawfulness" of having no leader and no full lead member for children's services [3]. A letter this site has now read in full, appended to the council's own report, shows Kipling had already put the same warning in writing to the Secretary of State a month before the vote.
Full Council met on the evening of 16 September and, after a delay nobody had planned for, passed the interim fix it had been sent to approve. This site reported on 17 September that Oldham had operated without a Leader, Deputy Leader or Cabinet since its Annual Meeting on 20 May, that its own monitoring officer had called the position unlawful in a statutory report on 31 July [5], and that the fix due before Council came with its own admission that it would not close the gap in children's services provision. What that piece could not report was what happened at the meeting itself, because at the time of writing it had not happened yet. It has now, and the council's own report contains an appendix this site had not previously been able to read.
The vote, and the walkout
Group leaders had informally agreed to support the proposals before the meeting started, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, but the agreement did not hold cleanly [3]. Oldham's newly installed Reform UK leader, Mark Wilkinson, announced partway through proceedings that his group intended to abstain, which triggered a 50-minute adjournment for group leaders to consult in private [3] [4]. When the vote was finally taken, the two local papers that covered the meeting both report the same outcome: 46 votes in favour, four abstentions from Royton Independent councillors Maggie Hurley and Jade Hughes and Reform UK councillors Paul Taylor and Rob Jackson, and one vote against, from Reform UK's deputy leader Gary Tarbuck, who left the chamber afterwards [3] [4]. Oldham Council had not published minutes or a formal decision record from the meeting as of the time of writing, so this figure rests on press accounts rather than the council's own record of the vote [2].
What passed matches, point for point, the structure the council's own report had proposed: the Liberal Democrats take the advisory lead on Resources, Labour on Place, Reform UK on Children and Young People, and the Oldham Group on Health and Adult Care, with the Conservatives chairing the new scrutiny board set up to review decisions before the chief executive takes them [1] [3]. None of the four lead members gained the power to make a decision. That power stays with Kipling, who continues to act under the emergency delegations she has been using since May.
What the chief executive said to the room
Both local papers carried substantially the same set of quotes from Kipling addressing the chamber before the vote, evidently drawn from the same wire copy. She told members plainly that the report was "not an attempt to appoint an administration" and that it "will not negate the unlawfulness of having no leader and no full lead member for children's services" [3]. She was equally direct about what happens if members reject the recommendations, or if a Leader never emerges: "the alternative to our endeavour to keeping council services running is intervention by the government. Intervention is not a neutral act. It will have an impact on our finances, on our workforce, and on you [councillors] and your ongoing ability to decide the direction of this council" [3]. Mayor Pam Byrne, opening the debate, told councillors bluntly that "we are not bigger than the public" and that it was "time to give up on politics, to be pragmatic for the good of the town" [4].
The letter Oldham sent before anyone outside the town hall was told
The council's report noted, on 16 September, that members should be aware of "communications between the Council and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government" since the last failed leadership meeting, and pointed to a letter attached as an appendix [1]. This site could not read that appendix when it first covered this story; the version of the report available at the time did not include it. The supplementary agenda published ahead of the 16 September meeting does, and this site has now read it in full.
The letter is dated 21 August 2026, the day after Oldham's fifth failed attempt to elect a Leader, and is addressed to the Rt Hon. Angela Rayner MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [1]. It is signed by three statutory officers together: Kipling as chief executive, Lee Walsh as section 151 officer and director of finance, and Alex Bougatef as monitoring officer and director of legal services [1]. It sets out the same failed meetings this site has already reported, states that the council is "utilising emergency delegations" as a temporary measure that is "not a sustainable substitute for democratic executive governance", and warns of "governance, operational, legal and reputational risks together with the potential for statutory intervention should the position remain unresolved" [1].
What the letter is not is a reply. It is Oldham notifying the department, not the department responding. Trade press reported in late August that the ministry had designated Oldham as requiring additional oversight, with a "stewardship" team due to meet the chief executive within a fortnight, a step reporters characterised as normally preceding formal intervention rather than being intervention itself. This site flagged when it first covered the story that it could not locate any government letter or published statement confirming that designation in those terms, and the appendix does not change that: it contains Oldham's outbound letter and nothing from the department in reply. What the letter does establish, in the council's own words rather than a paraphrase of press reporting, is that Oldham's most senior officers put the possibility of statutory intervention in writing to the Secretary of State five weeks before the vote that was meant to avoid it.
The part of the fix that still admits it is not one
The 16 September report's recommendations included a companion move: subject to a separate constitutional amendment on the same evening's agenda, the chief executive would take on temporary responsibility for executive decisions relating to children and young people, "to mitigate as far as possible" the requirement under section 19 of the Children Act 2004 for a Lead Member for Children's Services [1]. Councillors approved that constitutional change too, inserting a new rule into the council's constitution confirming that executive functions pass to the chief executive when the Leader, Deputy Leader and Cabinet are all simultaneously vacant, a situation the amendment's own explanatory text says "is not expressly contemplated by either the Act or the Council's Constitution" [1].
That gives someone accountable authority to sign off children's services decisions, which is more than existed the day before. It is still not what the law asks for. The same recommendation that creates the arrangement records, in the same sentence, that appointing Reform UK's group leader as the advisory Lead Member for Children and Young People "will not fulfil the entire statutory requirements set out in the Children Act 2004 and related statutory guidance, as the role has no executive decision making powers" [1]. Kipling said as much to the chamber before the vote. The gap her own monitoring officer identified in July has an interim custodian now. It does not have the leader the Children Act requires.
Sources
- Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, "Interim Governance Mitigations" and "Changes to the Constitution", supplementary agenda for Council, 16 September 2026 (includes Appendix E, letter to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, 21 August 2026). https://committees.oldham.gov.uk/documents/b30798/Supplementary%20Agenda%20-%20Items%2011%20and%2012%2016th-Sep-2026%2018.00%20Council.pdf?T=9
- Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, committee management system, documents for the Council meeting of 16 September 2026. https://committees.oldham.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=132&MId=9913
- Oldham Evening Chronicle (Charlotte Hall, Local Democracy Reporting Service), "New governance structure agreed", 17 September 2026. https://www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/news-features/3/politics/235/new-governance-structure-agreed
- Saddleworth Independent (Gary Carter), "Mayor's warning as Oldham authority finally sees leadership breakthrough", 17 September 2026. https://saddind.co.uk/mayors-warning-as-oldham-authority-finally-sees-leadership-breakthrough/
- Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, Monitoring Officer, "Statutory Report of the Monitoring Officer under Section 5 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 - Failure to Appoint a Council Leader and Form an Administration", 31 July 2026. https://committees.oldham.gov.uk/documents/s160945/FINAL%20STATUTORY%20REPORT%20OF%20THE%20MONITORING%20OFFICER%20UNDER%20SECTION%205%20LOCAL%20GOVERNMENT%20AND%20HOUSING%20ACT%2019.pdf