Issue - meetings

This report sets out how the Council is increasing its capacity to meet the commitments of the Devolution White Paper.

The committee considered a report in Addenda 2 setting out how the council was increasing its capacity to meet the commitments of the Devolution White Paper.

The Executive Director of Resources and Section 151 Officer presented the report which outlined why the council needed the new positions to manage its involvement in local government reform and devolution.  There will be a need to recruit to other roles, whether that is done internally or through temporary positions.

The job evaluations were conducted in line with the Korn Ferry approach used in evaluating the positions in Tiers 1 to 4.  Because the roles were temporary, it fell to the Chief Executive to approve them under the Constitution but the committee was asked to note the appointments.

Members asked the following:

·         If there any funding coming from central government towards the £10m budgeted for this work, given that it was something they were imposing on the local councils.

·         If there would be an impact of the contracts of the chief executives.

Officers responded as follows:

·         The full cost of transitioning was estimated to be in the region of £20m.  This was similar to the cost experienced by other councils.  The initial work was to provide a business case to demonstrate what saving would be made with a move to a single unitary. The government had provided about £285,000 to be shared across the three lead councils for the three proposals.

·         The chief executive contracts will not be affected until the transition happens.

Members commented that advice from other councils that have been through this process was that it was advantageous to do a lot of work in advance and avoid a dip in services if sufficient preparations have not been made.

Members agreed that the government had made this decision to reduce costs in local government and that this council had to provide the resources to prepare for it.

RESOLVED to:

i)          Note the establishment of the temporary roles of Programme Director – Local Government Reorganisation and Programme Director – Devolution; and

ii)        Note the remits of the job descriptions enclosed at Annex A.