Agenda item

To receive a briefing on the implications of the Localism Act 2012 for the Council’s corporate functions, and to contribute to the formulation of the Council’s plans for the ‘Community Right to Challenge’.

The Assistant Borough Solicitor provided an update on the Localism Act 2012with a particular focus on the implications of the Community Right to Challenge.

The Community Right to Challenge, brought into force on 27 June 2012, enabled voluntary and community bodies, a body of persons or a trust established for charitable purposes only, parish councils, two or more employees of an Authority or any other person or body specified by the Secretary of State to express an interest in running a local authority service.  The Authority on receiving an expression of interest must consider it and where it accepts it run a procurement exercise for the service.  The procurement exercise must be “appropriate having regard to the value and nature of the contract that may be awarded” however at the end of the procurement exercise there was no obligation to award a contract.

Work was taking place within the Council to identify all the Council’s future contracts and where relevant map out timeframes for when expressions of interest might be received.  Once this had been completed work would take place to identify when expressions of interest might be submitted for those services not already within the tendering arena.

The Department for Communities and Local Government had made a £11.5million funding pool available to support groups wishing to submit an expression of interest.

Arising from Members’ questions and comments the following points were noted:

·         The criteria for rejection of an expression of interest had been quite broadly expressed by the Department for Communities and Local Government

·         When a service ceased to be carried out by the local authority a service change had occurred and this should be dealt with under TUPE regulations

·         Employees of a local authority could made an expression of interest before they incorporated themselves into a relevant body

·         If an employee group submitted an expression of interest they could, if awarded the contract, potentially continue to work for the local authority however this would be dependent on their terms of employment and any perceived conflicts of interest

·         If a procurement exercise was trigged under the Community Right to Challenge then the procurement would be open to anyone who wished to participate. Additionally, a challenger did not have to be invited to participate if the authority considered the challenge to be weak for example it was no felt to be financially viable

·         It was felt that there were sufficient legislative tools available to prevent companies who were classified as non-relevant bodies from using the Community Right to Challenge legislation to their advantage

·         The Act’s provisions concerning Assets of Community Value had not yet come into force

It was noted that over 30% of the Council’s services are already delivered by external companies and it was acknowledged that it was difficult to gauge the level of interest that the legislation might generate at this stage.  It appeared that, to date, no expressions of interest had been received by other councils.

The Commission thanked the Assistant Borough Solicitor for his update and requested that the procurement timetable be brought to a future meeting for consideration.