Agenda item

Report to follow

Chris Blundell, Director of Corporate Services and Section 151 Officer, introduced the report and made the following points:

·  The report was being presented to Cabinet to ratify a decision that was taken back in January, the decision to set up a new local authority trading company to replace the contract that the Council had in place currently with Civica for the provision of revenues, benefits and customer services;

·  The decision was made in principle, subject to technical documents which include shareholder’s agreements, the articles association and the business plan;

·  The documents had been backed by the Legal team and were worked on in previous months with help from Ingrid Brown, Head of Legal and Democracy & Monitoring Officer and the other Monitoring Officers from Canterbury and Dover, along with input from the legal firm, Blake Morgan;

·  The Council were not initially looking to exit the contract with Civica as they took the decision to exit the market and focus primarily on software as that is where they have the majority of their income;

·  Civica were taken over by a different firm as part of a merger, who made the decision to focus primarily on software;

·  The service with Civica was reflected positively with both officers and members of the public;

·  The Council wanted to move the contract to a service akin to the Local Authority Trading Company in order to move it back in house, instead of going to a third-party company;

·  Officers expressed their interest in moving further toward this model in order to give the Council opportunity to trade and generate commercial income from ancillary services, customer services as well as revenues and benefits;

·  The Council were also looking to retain some of the existing terms and conditions, with the focus of maintaining key staff;

·  What was being proposed was a “lift and shift model”, in order to maintain the conditions that staff were enjoying, in such a way as to secure senior staff positions;

·  He informed the Panel that monthly meetings were carried out with senior Councillors from the three Councils, including the Leaders, Deputy Leaders and portfolio holders of those authorities in order to provide them with information on the progress;

·  The Cabinet in Canterbury already approved this report, with Thanet District Council bringing it to the next Cabinet meeting and Dover following shortly after;

·  Once all three Cabinets of the three authorities approved the decision, then the report would go to the East Kent Service Committee on 13 August 2024, to ratify the decision;

·  The Council was aiming to have the service go live and be operational by January 2025;

The Panel discussed the report, made comments and asked questions as follows:

·  Councillors expressed their approval of the working together with the other two authorities, in order to standardise the way of working across the three districts. However, there were concerns about moving away from a face-to-face with the public approach as there could be disapproval from the public regarding centralising these services. Officers replied that this was the chosen approach to maintain the service delivery that the Council preferred to have. They went on to say that to focus primarily on going local only would disaggregate the service and bring it in hour as a standalone service, which would cause an extreme cost pressure which was avoided in the first place by establishing this joined service. Officers reminded Councillors that any phone numbers or emails used by the public would be local to their areas;

·  Councillors asked if the Council’s senior team members had considered the amount of responsibility needed in order to take on the running of a secondary trading company and if there were any concerns about losing access to any innovative new technologies that may have came from having an outside contract. Officers replied that the primary new responsibilities would fall to the company board, in terms of appointing a new director and the representatives of each of the three authorities. Andreea Plant, Head of Property, was the selected representative for Thanet District Council. This decision was made as a statutory officer would have possibly presented a conflict of interest with their current roles. The other chosen officers from the other two authorities were chosen specifically in order to get a range of diverse expertise. In relation to the question regarding technology, Thanet District Council did benefit from the system in place, used by Civica and the intention is to keep using that system as it was a good fit for the Council;

·  Councillors asked if going this route would result in a cost saving and more scope for joined-up working and bringing other services back in house for the Council. Officers replied that there were some cost savings that have already been built into the existing budget, Thanet District Council itself stood to save approximately £100,000, with the possibility of getting closer to £200,000. They went on to say that the primary objective with moving this service back in house was to keep the transition as seamless as possible, but longer term, there would be opportunities to look at generating income from the areas that could also be brought back into house, an example would be the provision of ICT services being brought to a smaller organisation.

Councillors had no further recommendations and agreed the report to go to Cabinet.