Decision details

The Cabinet Member authorised:

1.    The Council enter into a Delegation Agreement (DA) with Cambridgeshire County Council for the provision of an Integrated Front Door Service for Children across Peterborough and Cambridgeshire for a period of 5 years from 1 January 2019 with an option to extend for up to a further 5 years, with Cambridgeshire County Council as the lead authority;

2.    That a shared Integrated Front Door Service for Children is provided by Cambridgeshire for both Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council;

3.    That Cambridgeshire County Council accepts the delegation of functions from Peterborough City Council as agreed and listed in the DA; and

4.    That the Director of Governance amends the constitution to reflect the delegated functions to Cambridgeshire County Council.

PCC and CCC are now joined together by the shared People and Communities Directorate. This has been in operation since June 2017, and whilst Children’s Services in the two Authorities are separate operational entities, they  have been successfully working together on a number of projects for the last 18 months.

PCC and CCC recognise that this agreement helps provide efficiencies and adds resilience to service provision at a time when service demand is increasing. All our partner agencies work across the local authority boundaries, and a bigger service operating across a wider geographical area would provide a better platform from which to provide services. This is especially true in relation to criminal activity in relation to the criminal exploitation of children.

CCC currently provide the bulk of the service areas under consideration ie the Emergency Duty Team, the MET Hub, the Early Help Hub and the Customer Service Centre. It is the best option to transfer small numbers of PCC and Serco staff to the bigger CCC service to maximise the benefits of consolidation.

The advantages for both councils of a shared service have been identified as:

·         More focused, consistent and effective safeguarding services for children across both PCC and CCC

·         Mixed skill and qualification based staffing group in key safeguarding services for both PCC and CCC, increasing resilience and flexibility in service provision.

·         Increased pool of customer service centre staff with specialist Children’s Services knowledge, experience and expertise arising from a larger staffing resource.

·         Opportunities for efficiencies through removing the need for separate information systems (this is in preparation for future developments).

·         Efficiencies through having a lean management team.

·         Opportunities for efficiencies through savings on premises and central corporate costs.

·         Economies of scale in the provision of training, through the ability to have a greater percentage of training delivered at council premises and in house, thus enabling more staff to benefit as well as providing better value for money. 

The council could decide not to enter into new shared service arrangements with CCC, though there are no alternative shared service opportunities at this time. There is an option to retain status quo, this doesn’t however add the resilience to service provision at a time of growing service demand, nor does it maximise future best practice or value for money opportunities.

None.

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