Invitees:

Councillor C E Smith - Cabinet Member - Regeneration and Economic Development

Andrew Jolley - Assistant Chief Executive

Lee Jones - Head of Regulatory Services

David Holland  – Head of the Joint Regulatory Service

The Scrutiny Officer provided the Committee with an update on the development of the Shared Regulatory Service between Bridgend, Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan Councils.  Following a procurement exercise, using the RCF, external agents Atkins were commissioned in September 2013 to produce a business case, Target Operating Model and implementation plan for the creation of a shared regulatory service

The Head of Regulatory Services and Operational Manager Enterprise and Specialist Services gave a presentation which updated Members on the current position of the Collaborative Services Project.

Members asked if BCBC were confident that large businesses would choose Bridgend as a primary Authority to work with and if there was a possibility that Cardiff would have a larger intake of businesses wanting to partnership with them over Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan.  They also asked how this issue would be addressed if this was the case.

The Operational Manager Enterprise and Specialist Services stated that the Regulatory Services Collaborative Project will allow BCBC for greater resilience and sustainability and Bridgend (as would be the same for the other partners) would benefit from a shared support to meet challenges and financial pressures that the authority will face in the future.  The Operational Manager Enterprise and Specialist Services stated they were confident that businesses would want to work with them as they have existing experience, already having a Primary Authority relationship with for example; the association of convenience stores which have over 33,500 members. She further added that a joint Committee consisting of two Councillors from each Local Authority involved in the collaboration has been set up specifically to monitor the Joint Regulatory Services Collaborative project and would be monitoring to ensure services are delivered objectively with workload monitored monthly.

Members questioned the success of the transfer of 170 employees to the Vale of Glamorgan authority

The Operational Manager Enterprise and Specialist Services confirmed that on the 1 May 2015 staff were transferred to the Vale of Glamorgan as host employer with their new contracts and pay arrangements, she explained that the transfer went well and staff had their first pay day on 15May 2015.  A consultation has taken place with staff to discuss any concerns they had in relation to the transfer which were responded to iteratively.  In response to a question from the Committee she explained that some staff have had changes in locations of their teams. They were currently consulting with staff as the new structure is populated as part of this the project is continuing to develop an agile working.

Members asked what the risks were to staff and how many redundancies had been made

The Operational Manager Enterprise and Specialist Services stated that any requirement for redundancies would be completed on a tier by tier basis and would be dealt with within the ring fencing procedures.  One of the aims of the project was to make savings as well as ensuring sustainability of the service and for this to be achieved; staff numbers would need to be reduced. However, they anticipated that redundancies would be far less in a collaborative setting.  She further added that most redundancies had so far been voluntary and some staff had moved internally to different positions.  The final position and impact on staff originating from BCBC would not be known until the new structure was populated.

Members asked what the improved outcomes would be when the Collaboration is fully implemented.

The Head of Regulatory Services stated it was too early to give an indication as the structure would need to be fully embedded for outcomes to be apparent but would report back to the Committee at a later date.

Conclusions

Following their discussions with Officers, the Committee requested they receive clarification of the staff numbers for the current structure of Regulatory Services compared to the numbers following the restructure; broken down by LA and to incorporate information on voluntary redundancies.

The Committee concluded that they would revisit the item in approximately 18 months to allow the new structure to embed and performance measures to be set in place and enable the Committee to then consider how the service has continued to perform under the new structure.