Agenda item

Background:

This report provided details of proposals for Gravesham Borough Council to assume responsibility for the discharge of Medway Council’s executive and non-executive Licensing functions. This was permitted under Section 101(1) of the Local Government Act 1972, which allowed local authorities to delegate non-executive functions to other local authorities and under the Local Authorities (Arrangements for the Discharge of Functions) (England) Regulations 2012 which provided local authorities to delegate executive functions to other local authorities.

Medway Council had approached Gravesham Borough Council regarding the potential to share a service for Licensing due to the Licensing Manager at Medway Council choosing to take retirement at the end of April 2018 and as part of the digitalisation programme.

A Business Case had been prepared by officers from Gravesham and Medway to provide further information regarding the work of the two separate Licensing Services, including current costs, staff transfers, potential savings and other benefits from establishing a shared Licensing Service such as increased resilience, increased efficiencies, sharing of best practice, expansion of knowledge base and accelerated progress in digitalisation.  This was attached at Appendix 1 to the report.

A report on the proposals had been submitted to Gravesham Borough Council’s Cabinet on 25 June 2018 where progression of a fully shared Licensing Service with Medway Council was agreed and its Full Council was recommended to accept the delegation by Medway Council of its Licensing functions.

The Licensing and Safety Committee had considered this report on 26 June 2018 and its comments were set out at section 8 of the report. The Business Support Overview and Scrutiny Committee had considered this report on 5 July 2018 and its comments were set out in an addendum report, which was tabled at the meeting.

Reasons:

It is anticipated that option 1 will bring the following benefits:

·         Added resilience across the two authorities. There will be a larger pool of officers covering both authorities providing additional resilience to cover sickness absence/vacancies or increased workload should this be required.

·         Availability of specialist skills across both authorities leading to increased efficiency; potential for a reduced requirement for external support from contractors, etc.

·         Sharing of best practice in the delivery of Licensing Services.

·         Expansion of knowledge base of individuals.

·         Accelerated progress in digitalisation which will bring further efficiencies.