Decision details

With the approval of the Chairman of Growth, Environment and Resources Scrutiny Committee, the urgency procedure, special urgency procedure, and waiver of call-in procedure have been invoked to suspend the requirement to publish notice of the decision for 28 days, to suspend the requirement to publish the decision for five days, and to suspend the three day call-in period.

This decision needs to follow special urgency procedures as outlined in the Councils Constitution because of the limited timescales to undertake the transfer of Leisure and Cultural services to the Council.  Significant work has taken place since that date and the Report is the result of discussions with Vivacity and Partners to set out where these services will be delivered from the 17th September. The urgency of this decision is to ensure there is clarity with Members and the public on what is happening and what these interim arrangements are.  This is not on the forward plan.

The Cabinet Member approved:

1. The transfer of services provided by Vivacity to Peterborough Limited and City College Peterborough;
2. The proposed client arrangements and the associated processes to re-open services;
3. The draft timetable and review process to transfer these services to their final delivery provider;
4. The financial remuneration package for Peterborough Limited and City College Peterborough to deliver services in this interim period.

The 4 Recommendations of this report ensure that the services are stabilised in the mediums term, with information collected in that period ensuring that the Council makes the right decision for the long term delivery of the service.

There were other options that could have been considered but were discounted quite early.  The main reason for this was the fact that MHCLG have in July confirmed that they will reimburse lost income which would not be the case if 3rd Party contractors delivered the services.  This was key to the intermediate decision for delivery of the service to be under “council control” for a year while information is gathered in the “post COVID-19" environment to decide the most appropriate delivery mechanism and level for the long term.  As such the Councils view was that all the service was to remain intact over this period to maximise further contributions from the Government. 

Other options considered/offered included:

·         Giving parts of the service to other providers to run;

·         Letting 3rd Parties deliver the Sports service (Charitable and Commercial);

·         Setting up another Trust to deliver the services.

A full in house transfer was considered but bringing services into a PCC owned entity gives the services the flexibility to work towards an independent future in the long term and to give them the ability to access funding that may not be available to the Council itself.

None.

Funding and Management Agreement dated 1st May 2010 (‘the FMA’) with Vivacity Cultural and Leisure Trust.