'My vision for Wolverhampton': New council leader reveals bold plan for city
"I'm not here as a place holder. I'm looking to take steps towards creating what I believe a decent, fair city is."
Ian Brookfield has no plans to ease into his term as leader of Wolverhampton Council, a role he says he has been preparing for over the last couple of years.
The 53-year-old has a series of bold ambitions for the city, including drastically reducing the unemployment rate, attracting new businesses – as well as forging stronger links with firms already trading in the city – and diverting cash into new services for young people.
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"I'm looking to make a real difference," he told the E&S, sitting in his plush new meeting room at the Civic Centre.
He says spending a year as Mayor in 2015-16 gave him a "good grounding" in what it takes to become council leader, showing him that Wolverhampton is "all about the people above all else".
"It also means the 14-hour working days have not shocked me," he added with a chuckle.
The Fallings Park councillor won the Labour group's leadership election at the start of May, replacing the retiring Roger Lawrence a year after a failed attempt to oust him.
He says he is acutely aware of the challenges facing the city, and wants to build on the work started by his predecessor, who he credits with doing an "unbelievable job" in running the city over a 15-year period.
"There are natural cycles and the time is right for change," he said, admitting that the city's Labour group has not always been a picture of harmony.
"We're a group of disparate people with a common purpose. Occasionally families squabble. It's natural and it will happen under me, I'm sure.
"There's nothing wrong with debate and discussion. I want an open administration. I want people to bring ideas, to ask questions and to challenge.
"Between us all we will come to a consensus. We're 50 people, we have the whole gamut of the party here in Wolverhampton.
"We can get past that and after all the debate and discussions I'm sure we can come out the other end with some decent policies."
A Scouser born and bred in the north of Liverpool, he describes his journey to the top office in the Black Country's only city council as "a learning curve in life and politics".
One of his earliest memories is being taken by his father George, a long-distance lorry driver and a shop steward in the old Transport and General Workers' Union, to see Prime Minister and Huyton MP Harold Wilson speak at the Pier Head.
"Thousands of people turned up. It was the start of my basic education in politics," Mr Brookfield recalls.
He worked as an auxiliary nurse in a mental hospital, before becoming a qualified nurse working in hospitals across his home city.
There he met his wife of 33 years Paula – then a ward boss, now a Wolverhampton councillor – while he was training. "She says I was hiding in the linen cupboard, I maintain I was cleaning it," he says.
The pair had two children together, Paul, now 31, who speaks fluent Scouse, and 30-year-old Tony who has a Black Country twang.
"Primarily we speak Scouse in the house, but our youngest always chips in with 'how am ya?'" Mr Brookfield says.
In the 1980s he joined the Prison Service to work in hospitals, a job which lasted a decade and brought him to the West Midlands.
"It was challenging work. Prison can be a very sad place at times," he says, recalling one year when his department dealt with six inmate suicides.
It was while he was at home in Low Hill, where he still lives now, that local councillor Pete Bilson knocked on his door and asked him to put up a Labour poster.
That was 1990, and within time Mr Brookfield joined the Labour Party and became an active campaigner.
He was first elected as a councillor in Bushbury in 1995, moved across to Oxley in 1999 – a seat which he lost in 2007 while in Cabinet – before returning as a Fallings Park councillor in 2012.
"All my jobs had involved helping people. It's who I am. Becoming a councillor did not seem like a strange step on from that."
Mr Bilson is now his deputy. "He'll have forgotten more than I'll ever know. It's always good to have someone like that I can confide in. I'm very fortunate to have him."
In the period when he was voted out of office he set up a PR firm running communications for politicians including West Midlands MEP Neena Gill and the late Wolverhampton MP Ken Purchase.
He got a job with the Royal Mail in Sun Street, working as a postman, and for the last 10 years served as an elected official in the Communication Workers Union.
He recently handed his notice in, which he said was one of the hardest decisions he has ever had to make.
"The Royal Mail is a massive employer and so important for local jobs. It was something I really loved."
He says his attention is now fully focused on improving people's lives in Wolverhampton.
"It's a smashing city but we still have double the rate of unemployment of other areas, so one of my priorities is dealing with that," he said.
"My ambition is for in four years time for us to be on the level. That would make a real difference.
"It's getting businesses in and good jobs so people have more money in their pockets. The council will do whatever we can.
"Wolverhampton is the home of manufacturing, it''s where the industrial revolution started.
"There's no reason why we can't have that again."
Mr Brookfield said there were "many positives" about the city, including the Civic halls revamp, the new national construction centre at the university's Springfield Campus, and the Brewer's Yard development which is currently looking for funding.
"We'll get the money from somewhere," he insisted.
But he warned the city would need to move with the times as far as its "all round offer" was concerned.
He said that while he was hopeful that Debenhams would remain in the city – albeit in a downsized form – there needed to be a fresh focus on leisure, entertainment and city living.
"The day of the department store in its current format is gone," he said. "People just don't want them anymore. I'm looking to get together with businesses to map out the city's future.
"The offer has got to change. People expect to have entertainment and leisure in their town and city centres. You can sit in your house and order a three-piece suite if you want."
He said the upcoming Westside development "ties in perfectly" with his vision for Wolverhampton, which involves the city centre "still bustling" after 8pm.
And having just been appointed to the position of West Midlands Combined Authority economy chief, his work will also see him looking out for the whole region.
"The time will come when I will go, and hopefully people will be able to see that I have moved the us in the direction I was hoping for," he says.
