Issue - meetings

The Chief Operating Officer will give a presentation on progress of decoupling and the next steps.

Full Council considered a report on 18 July 2022 regarding disbanding of Joint Shared Services and Personnel Committee and Joint Appeals Panel, this is attached for reference as it provides useful background information.

Resolved

(1)       That having given due consideration, the presentation be noted.

The Chairman welcomed Nathan Elvery, interim Chief Operating Officer, who gave an update on decoupling of the strategic partnership with Oxfordshire County Council (OCC).

The Chief Operating Officer explained that following the decision to end the strategic partnership in February 2022, a programme and timetable was established to support the partnership formally ending on August 31 2022. The decoupling process was split into four transitional phases, starting with the management team and moving on to each of the 23 service areas included within the existing partnership arrangements.

Options for the services moving forward were all evaluated against the same five criteria, and the Joint Shared Services and Personnel Committee considered each proposal over the period April to June.

The presentation provided to the Committee gave details of the approved recommendations for each service area, the financial and human resource implications, any transitional arrangements in place and any additional information by way of background information for the Committee.

In response to questions from the Committee the Chief Operating Officer explained that no redundancies had been made.

When the strategic partnership had been established an employing authority had been identified for each post. During the decoupling process it was assumed that employees would remain with their employing authority, but both Council’s had agreed a flexible approach so that if the majority of work for a post was with the other council, the employee was able to transfer accordingly with the joint approval of both Council’s.  

The Chief Operating Officer explained that due to the interim arrangements in place it was not yet known if posts would be full time or full time equivalents, but that information would be provided to Members when it was available.

Regarding costs of the decoupling and interim arrangements, the Chief Operating Officer advised the Committee that the total figure wouldn’t be known until the process had been completed. Details of the current and projected financial baseline were included in the presentation and would be updated with final figures once they were known.

Resolved

(1)       That having given due consideration, the presentation be noted.