Issue - meetings

To consider a report by the Managing Director regarding a Legal shared service for Cambridgeshire County Council, Huntingdonshire District Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council.

Approves the Business Case and delegate authority to the Managing Director, in conjunction with the Executive Councillor for Strategic Economic Development and Legal, to make decisions and to take steps that are necessary, conducive or incidental to the establishment of the Legal shared service in accordance with the detailed business case.

Following the report outlining the overall approach that had been taken to develop the first phase of the partnership arrangement between Huntingdonshire District Council (HDC), South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC) and Cambridge City Council (CCC) for ICT, Legal Services and Building Control shared services, the Cabinet received a further report (a copy of which is appended in the Minute Book) to approve the business case to establish a Legal shared service.

It was explained that there were strategic and financial benefits for all three partners to create a Legal shared service and the Officer’s report included a detailed financial model to show how savings would be achieved against the baseline budget.

In discussing the financial detail it was noted that external legal costs were not incorporated into the level of spend figures and recharges were yet to be incorporated into the financial information.

The Cabinet noted that the Authority had learnt from the CCTV shared service experience and in order to maintain good relations between the Partners that financial projection figures over a 5 year period were necessary so that all Partners fully understood the financial commitments.

It was explained that the three Councils had been awarded funding from Government via the Transformation Challenge Award to support the work towards a range of shared service arrangements.

During the Cabinet’s debate Councillor Bull left the room and did not return to the meeting.

During the Cabinet’s discussions it was emphasised that the Council had already experienced a significant amount of staff changes and incurred expense via redundancies and that the Council would not incur further expense as a result of any redundancies in the Partner Authorities.  Whereupon the Cabinet,

RESOLVED

to approve the Business Case and delegate authority to the Managing Director, in conjunction with the Executive Councillor for Strategic Economic Development and Legal, to make decisions and to take steps that are necessary, conducive or incidental to the establishment of the Legal shared service in accordance with the detailed business case.

To consider a report by J Lancaster providing the business case to establish a Legal shared service and detailing the activities to create the Legal shared service.

The Panel received a report by the Managing Director, presenting the business case for the proposed Legal shared service and including details of the financial savings expected.

The Head of Operations explained the Scope for the future legal service as included in the report.  Members were informed of the key points of the report:

•  There are expected disaggregation issues for participating Councils; these issues are in hand within the respective Councils.

•  Work relating to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Data Protection Act (DPA), Assets of Community Value (ACV) and similar areas will remain within the participating Councils who will commission legal advice and support as appropriate from the Practice.

•  Each authority will take a decision on its required Monitoring Officer arrangements separately from this project.

•  The Practice business case is based on the need to create resilience, improve the quality of service to clients, become more efficient and increase capacity within the Practice in order to reduce expenditure on external legal support and increase external fee earning opportunities.

The Panel concluded that the report clearly showed the benefits of a shared Legal service between the three Councils.  Members have approved this report for Cabinet.