Agenda and draft minutes

We elected County Councillor S. Jones as Chair.

We appointed County Councillor P. Farley as Vice-Chair.

County Councillor S. Howarth declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest pursuant to the Members’ Code of Conduct as he is a member of reach.

Context:

To propose a new Delivery Option for the Leisure, Tourism, Culture and Youth Services following an independent options appraisal by Anthony Collins Solicitors and seek agreement on the next steps.

Key Issues:

          With increasingly constrained resources the Council needs to identify and consider new ways of working and operating in order to ‘maintain locally accessible services’ as the demand for local services continues to grow.  New options and operating models for service delivery are therefore required if the Authority is to become more effective and efficient.  The Council’s Tourism, Leisure, Culture, Outdoor Learning and Youth Service has a combined budget of £2.639m with approximately 441 staff. Although initially the services in scope included Community and Adult Education and Museums a deeper assessment of these services has concluded there is a significant amount of transformational work to be undertaken within the Council prior to their full consideration to include current service offer, premises, staffing ratios and funding. The list of services for this proposal therefore include: Leisure, Fitness and Outdoor Education; Youth services; Countryside services to include managing access to the countryside, visitor sites, biodiversity issues and outdoor learning and play; Tourism Marketing, Development, Visitor Information provision and Events; and Management and marketing of Monmouthshire’s Visitor Attractions to include Caldicot Castle, Tintern Old Station and Shire Hall, Monmouth.

          Over the last four years these Services have contributed over £1.65m of revenue savings to the Council and generated £17m of income.  However, there are no more efficiencies to be made.

          The Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) is currently showing a shortfall of 12% over the next four year period and if this was to be applied proportionally to all services would further increase the funding gap by 2020/21 to £542,000. In order to meet the budget targets, there would need to be a reduction in services for 2017/18 by 10% which rises to 20% in 2020/21. 

The objectives of Anthony Collins, Solicitors, have been to consider the right mix of Services and the best new Delivery Option to help the Council address the projected £542,000 funding shortfall over the next four year period.  An analysis of the options has resulted in four recommended Principle Delivery Options namely:

• Delivery Option One:           Do Nothing.

• Delivery Option Two:           Transform the Services ‘in house’.

• Delivery Option Three:        Move the Services into an Alternative Delivery Model (ADM).

• Delivery Option Four:          Outsource the services to a third party.

The options appraisal needed to assess which of the principle Delivery Options could create the potential for growth and sustainability for the services as well as an analysis of the legal and governance structures available and make recommendations on:

·         Growth and investment opportunities.

·         Skills gaps.

·         Human Resources (HR) including TUPE and future pension arrangements.

·         Procurement routes for awarding services.

·         Asset/leasehold transfer implications.

·         Stakeholder engagement to maximise staff, community and service user involvement.

The result of the appraisal and subsequent recommendation from Anthony Collins is Delivery Option Three, which is to establish a new Alternative Delivery Model (ADM) for the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.