We are seeking the views of residents, businesses, partners and stakeholders on proposals about the way in which the Council’s main regulatory and business support services are delivered in the future.

We, along with many other local councils, have been faced with making significant savings with more still to come over the next three years.  The regulatory services functions, which includes Planning and Development, Building Control, Public Protection, Private Sector Housing and Licensing, have not been immune to these savings.  In order to minimise the impact of further financial savings an innovative proposal to re-design the way in which these important services are delivered has been developed over the past 12 months.  The key services are summarised below:

1. Planning and Development Management – ensuring that our approach to planning leads to sustainable development of the county.
2. Building Control – services which ensure standards in relation to new buildings or changes to existing building meet the required standards.
3. Public Protection – which includes services like Environmental Health, Trading Standards, Private Sector Housing, Licensing and Animal Health and Parking Enforcement.
4. Natural and Built Environment – services which protect the natural and built environment from a range of risks.

The services in scope are diverse and wide ranging.  Planning and development services ensure that new developments are properly approved through planning legislation taking account of strategic and policy objectives.  Building control services ensure that work on new and existing building meets all the latest building standards. 

Environmental health services protect the environment and our health by ensuring housing conditions in privately-rented accommodation are adequate and businesses comply with legislation on contaminated land, air quality and pollution, nuisance and food safety and standards.  Environmental health services also investigated cases of noise nuisance which links with out other work on dealing with anti-social behaviour. 

We also administer the licensing of a wide range of trades and businesses including Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicles and Licensed Premises.  We work with farmers and markets to ensure effective control of animal health and welfare standards and our trading standards team ensure that businesses trade fairly and safely as well as doing a significant amount of work to protect vulnerable people (for example, working closely with Police colleagues on tackling doorstep crime and high pressure selling). 

The service plan documents shown in the link below explain a bit more about what we do and how we work.

Service Re-design

This re-design is in line with Shropshire Council’s desire to commission services which better meet local needs more quickly, more cheaply but without compromising service quality and value for money.  Work has been undertaken to look at the different delivery models for regulatory services and the Council is seeking views on two of those models, as set out below.  We have conducted our own options appraisal and risk assessment of the models.  This exercise pointed to a preferred model from this exercise but either of the two models presented can work but as you would expect each has advantages and disadvantages. 

We originally evaluated five different business models and the more detailed explanation of these model is outlined in the attached Consultation Document.  The five models we assessed are shown below.

1. Deliver through a wholly owned council company – the Council has already created and is successfully operating its own wholly-owned company called IP&E Ltd.

2. Continue to deliver services in-house– this explored the risks and benefits of continuing to provide services as they are now but building on the significant re-design that had already taken place. 

3. Collaboration with other councils – this remains a possible model for the future as other council’s begin to explore different ways of tackling the financial challenges that Shropshire Council has faced and continues to face and the legal and governance arrangements to support this are well defined.

4. Social Enterprise e.g. staff mutual or cooperative – some Councils are looking at the creation of a social enterprise like a staff mutual or cooperative for example. 

5. Private sector partnership or outsourcing  - some councils have outsourced the delivery of different council services to the private sector and others have entered into formal partnerships to create joint venture companies for the delivery of council services.

The two models which we are seeking feedback on are set out below.  We provide a more detailed explanation about how we narrowed down the models in the Consultation documentation below

Model 1:  Deliver through a wholly owned council company – this provides the opportunity to operate in a more commercial way to generate income which can be re-invested to support the continued delivery of core regulatory and business support services, but is a more complex model to operate in practice requiring safeguards to minimise the risk of conflicts of interest.

Model 2:  Continue to deliver services in-house – this will mean that services can be delivered as they are now as part of Shropshire Council, but does not fit with the Council’s desire to become a commissioning council and means that the services cannot operate in a commercial environment by trading to generate income from the provision of specialist business support services.

Therefore, before the Council’s Cabinet makes any formal decisions about the way forward we want to know what residents, businesses, partners and stakeholders think about the two models.  The feedback will then be considered and included in a draft business case can then be considered.

What will happen at the end of the consultation?

All the comments we receive will be considered and a summary provided to the Council’s Cabinet as part of the Business Case which will be prepared for Members to consider before they make their decision about the most appropriate future delivery model for the services.

Documents

• RaBSS Consultation - more information.pdf
• Planning Services Service Plan 2013-2014.pdf
• Public protection service strategy 2012-15 Year 2.pdf
• Statement of community involvement.pdf

There was a limited response to the consultation with a total of 7 responses. There were no trends. 

The outcome from the consultation was used to form a Business Case which was presented in a report to Cabinet 31 July 2014.

We are really keen to hear what you have to say so this can inform our thinking before we make a decision on the most appropriate delivery model for these services.  We would like to hear from you even if you have not used any of the services because the more feedback we get the better the chance we have of responding to local needs and expectations when we re-design these services.

You can let us have your comments on the two business models we have presented using the contact details on this page. We'd really like to hear:

• How do you feel about them? 
• What concerns, if any, do you have about the models? 
• What benefits do you think could result from either model? 
• What could we do to address your concerns and enhance the benefits?

A more detailed explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the two models is outlined in the more detailed Consultation document.