Antony Walker, Corporate Policy and Performance Assistant

Birmingham City Council

My Role:
My role includes providing support for monitoring performance across the Council both through quarterly monitoring of performance indicators and through assisting the Comprehensive Area Assessment process. Other areas within this include data quality, annual reporting and coordinating Improved Services Corporate Management Team, whose responsibility is to look at where cross-directorate working can improve outcomes for service users. Recently I initiated a project within the department to encourage sustainable working through the combination of smart meters and a wide-ranging communication campaign.


The Challenge, Why did you apply?
I want to focus on solving the problems that blight Britain, the poverty and inequality, the pockets of ignorance and hatred, the effects that climate change will wreak on a globalised world. I want to be on the front line to tackle these issues and help Britain to lead the way as it has done so much in history. These problems can be tackled most effectively at a local level, where strategies can recognise the variances in demography and can prioritise resources to focus on the issues most problematic in that area. This competition will help me improve and refine the skills that I will need to reach the top. I hope to learn much from the other contestants and expect the competition to bring the best out of me.


What would you do with the £10,000 scholarship if you won?
There is much to learn around the world such as from the Scandinavian welfare system, their plans for producing a zero carbon economy or even studying the American state system for how we could empower local areas. Birmingham is a city with over a million people, it is large, complex and diverse, yet it is still limited in the ways that it can take on a voice for its people. I would create a project that highlights how solutions for the most complex problems