Issue - meetings
Sharing Building Control Services with South Northamptonshire Council
Meeting: 06/12/2010 - Executive (Item 87)
87 Cherwell/South Northamptonshire Building Control Shared Service Proposals 
PDF 192 KB
Report of Head of Building Control and Engineering Services
Summary
To consider whether it is appropriate and beneficial to Cherwell and South Northamptonshire Councils to merge their Building Control services into a jointly managed operation.
Recommendations
The Executive is recommended:
(1) Subject to the endorsement of the Cabinet of South Northamptonshire Council who are concurrently considering this report, to agree in principle to implementing joint management arrangements for the Building Control services of Cherwell and South Northamptonshire.
(2) To instruct the Head of Building Control and Engineering Services, and Head of People and Improvement to carry out the recruitment of the joint Building Control Manager and Team Leaders for each of the Councils as set out in this report and its appendices.
Additional documents:
Decision:
Approved
Minutes:
The Head of Building Control and Engineering Services submitted a report to consider whether it was appropriate and beneficial to Cherwell District Council and South Northamptonshire Council to merge their Building Control services into a jointly managed operation.
Resolved
(1) That subject to the endorsement of the Cabinet of South Northamptonshire Council, who are concurrently considering this report, to agree in principle to implementing joint management arrangements for the Building Control services of Cherwell District Council and South Northamptonshire Council.
(2) That the Head of Building Control and Engineering Services, and Head of People and Improvement be instructed to carry out the recruitment of the joint Building Control Manager and Team Leaders for each of the Councils as set out in the report and its appendices (annex to the minutes as set out in the minute book).
Reasons
The key reasons for proposing this venture are that it will give both Cherwell and South Northamptonshire Building Control Services a more assured future and over a relatively short period of time the revenue costs borne by both Authorities to fund the non fee element of building control work will decrease.
Options
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Option One |
Adopt the shared service approach contained and recommended in this report.
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Option Two |
Not to form a shared service but for each Building Control service to continue to operate entirely separately. The risk of this do-nothing approach is that each service would continue to struggle in the face of increasing private sector competition, losing flexibility and resilience, and perhaps unable to recruit replacement staff effectively. This would hasten a decline to each service becoming one of last resort and without the ability to contribute effectively to other relevant services of both Councils. Cherwell would probably have to seek shared service elsewhere where it might have to become the third or fourth partner in an already formed and established alliance,
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Option Three |
To agree to a joint venture in principle but to delay bringing it about. There is a strong prognosis that if conditions change for the two services they will worsen. The reasoning behind a shared service would be less compelling and the net benefits may be lost if a decision to proceed is delayed.
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