Meeting documents

The Committee will receive an update on recent changes to the Council's Legal Services.

Contributors:

Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources

Mr Jamie Hollis, Head of Legal and Compliance

The Chairman welcomed Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources and Mr Jamie Hollis, Head of Legal and Compliance to the meeting.  Mr Chilver introduced the item by explaining that the Council’s contract for legal services with HB Law had been terminated on 30^th September 2019 and an interim arrangement to 1^st April 2020 was now in place. Currently there was a full team and since 1^st October there had been very few concerns or queries raised by legal service users, which was very positive.

Mr Hollis took Members through the report and highlighted the following points:

·         The new Legal Service was a unique opportunity for collaboration with legal colleagues from the District Councils ahead of unitary transition. It had been a very positive experience working with the county-wide project team in delivering Phase 1 of the project, and Phase 2 discussions were about to begin.

·         Additional legal staff had been recruited to ensure sufficient capacity was available to cover all current BCC legal work, and all IT had been in place on day one. File migration had been successful, including historic files, all of which were now with BCC.

·         The change to Legal Services had been communicated to all staff via a comprehensive communications plan and business unit colleagues who were regular service users had been involved in the preparatory work.

·         The new Legal Service was operating a full cost recovery model, billing the business units at a set hourly rate in arrears, as they used the service. Additional charges for barristers etc would be charged directly to the business units.  The service wanted to be more responsive to the needs of clients, as well as offering value for money.

·         A contingency had been set aside to cover overheads, and any unexpected increase or decrease in demand in 2019/20.  Initial set up costs were estimated to be approximately £30,000 higher than anticipated due to costs associated with third parties, but reserves had been identified to cover these.

In response to Members’ questions and during the subsequent discussions the following main points were noted:

·         All relevant staff transferred to the new service as planned.  In hindsight it would have been helpful for staff if additional clarity around terms and conditions could have been provided earlier in the process.

·         By the end of day one, all staff had been issued with the appropriate IT hardware and everything was working properly.

·         There was a discussion about whether the shared service with Harrow had been successful.  It was acknowledged that there were different opinions - on the whole it had worked effectively.  With the transition to Unitary it was decided that it would be more appropriate to bring the service back in-house.

·         Mr Chilver commented that there had also been a shared HR service with Harrow and it would be helpful to review the lessons learned from both shared services.  There were also some issues remaining with pension liabilities for staff.

·         The issue of capacity and sufficient in-house expertise was raised.  Mr Hollis explained that part of Phase 2 would be a ‘stocktaking’ exercise, mapping out the existing staff and where any gaps might be.  There may be some duplication of staff but on the whole, the specialisms of district and county staff were complementary, and the legal services project proactively worked toward minimising any duplication.

·         The Legal Advice unitary workstream had been tasked separately with overseeing any additional legal capacity needed to support unitary transition requirements for the new Buckinghamshire Council.

·         It was hoped that the legal team would all use one case management system from 1^st April 2020.

·         A Member suggested that Legal Services should promote their service offer to Academies across the county. 

The Chairman thanked Mr Chilver and Mr Hollis for attending the meeting.