Three councils unveil in principle agreement to share
services
Joint statement from Cllr Colin Barrow,
Leader, Westminster City Council; Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader,
Hammersmith and Fulham Council and Cllr Sir Merrick Cockell,
Leader, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on service mergers
between the three authorities, following the Comprehensive Spending
Review statement, launching a project to merge services with plans
to be agreed by February 2011.
"In challenging times our priority is to protect high quality
front-line public services, while preserving the democratic
sovereignty of local authorities.
"Ensuring we can provide a high standard of local services in
today’s tough economic climate means thinking differently about how
we operate, concentrating on what's important to the people we
serve and ensuring we continue to care for the most vulnerable in
our communities. Our residents would expect nothing less.
"To achieve this in the age of austerity we need to seriously
examine new ways of working including sharing service provision
with other local authorities to deliver more for less.
"That is why this week we have met and decided to potentially share
every council service between our three councils. This may include
merging services to reduce duplication and drive out needless cost.
While we won’t rule anything out at this stage, we expect to focus
quite quickly on a few major areas where sharing and merging
services is viable and good for the public. There are a number of
areas, such as core democratic services where we are unlikely to
merge provision.
"The early focus will be building on the initial work to merge our
children’s services departments which is already making solid
progress, while also building the business case to share our
adults’ services departments.
“We will only go forward where there is a clear democratic, social
and economic case to do so.
"In the coming weeks we will set up a series of working groups to
develop and study options for three main areas: environmental
services, family services and corporate services.
"Our Chief Executives will report back in February next year with
recommendations for action before we then consider the next steps,
while our staff and our partners will be fully consulted at every
stage, with public engagement when firm plans emerge.
"We want to stress though that local priorities will still be
driven by local people, and the democratic mandate rested in
elected councillors such as ourselves, will be retained.
"Our plans may be the first of their kind but sharing of services
in this way can no longer be viewed as a radical concept. It will
soon become the norm for local authorities looking for innovative
ways to keep costs down while delivering high quality front-line
services."
For further information contact Media and
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