Peterborough City Council Agree Expensive Formation of a shared legal service arrangement with Rutland County Council
A shared legal service will be provided from within Peterborough City Council for both Peterborough City Council and Rutland County Council;
Peterborough City Council accepted the delegation of authority from Rutland County Council for the purpose of providing a shared legal service for the two authorities; delegated functions will be carried out by the Head of Legal Services appointed by Peterborough City Council to manage the delivery of legal services to both authorities; and Peterborough City Councils Monitoring Officer will amend the Constitution to reflect those delegated functions from Rutland County Council.
Peterborough City Council will enter into a shared service arrangement with Rutland County Council to form a single legal services team.
The service will be managed by the current Head of Legal Services for Peterborough City Council and staff will transfer to Peterborough City Council from Rutland County Council’s legal team.
The provision of a shared service offers benefits by increasing the staffing resources available to both Councils and enables the legal services team to offer increased specialism in certain areas of law for the benefit of both Councils.
There are economies of scale to be gained from using shared library resources, making best use of training and shared use of the case management and performance management systems being developed by Peterborough City Council.
Service level agreements will be entered into with the individual departments within Peterborough and Rutland Councils which will monitor the use made of the service and the quality of the work undertaken.
Rutland will pay their share of the service on a monthly basis to be assessed according to the number of hours work undertaken at a rate of £70 per hour. This is the estimated cost of meeting the salary and overhead costs of the service although it is subject to revision on an annual basis with the right of either council to withdraw from the arrangement if it does not deliver in accordance with expectations. Rutland has agreed to provide a guaranteed level of work/funding in first two years of the arrangement to minimise the financial risk to this Council of providing the service as the lead authority.
Rutland County Council’s Cabinet has already agreed to the provision of a shared legal service.
