He is an expert on public sector pension funds[3][4] and hyper-local data and researches these areas in particular at Birmingham City University.

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.

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.

[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.

[32] Clancy began researching how hyper-local neighbourhoods in the U.K. experienced life differently from each other even in a relatively local context.

This was initially to explore how especially non-urban, rural and coastal areas, which he termed ‘ruralpolitan’ and ‘coastalpolitan’ had appeared to experience very differently the Brexit referendum, the implementation of its result and the political fall-out from these events.

[34][5][35] He compiled and collated wide sources of that MSOA and LSOA data relating especially to population density, BAME, age, deprivation levels, neighbourhood characteristics, health and rural/urban classifications.

He also proposed that local health data and hospital admissions was the place to start to base any policy response.

[36] Local intensive care doctors in Birmingham also urged caution at the same time as deaths and hospital admissions were very low across the city.

[44] Clancy stepped down as leader during a labour dispute at the council when a deal he had prepared to end a refuse collection strike was prevented from being implemented.

[48] His career has included stints as a teacher, visiting lecturer at University of Birmingham Business School and solicitor.