Cheshire East Council's Cabinet has approved plans to set up a building and planning support consultancy that will provide services for the residents of Cheshire East.
The new company will be owned and controlled by the council and will provide a one-stop shop for people who are seeking advice or planning to make investments.
Private sector providers are moving into this market and if the Council does nothing, it is estimated that the service will lose income to competitors, which could cost the authority £892,000 over the next five years.
However, by setting up the new company and tapping into new income streams the Council says this potential loss could be converted into a saving of £269,000 – a net benefit of £1.161m.
The proposal also opens up opportunities for partnership working with neighbouring authorities to generate benefits from economies of scale.
Services provided by the new company will include building control, local land charges and property searches, street naming and numbering, planning liaison, and planning support.
Cheshire East Council employees who transfer to the new company will be covered by the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment Rights) Regulations 2013.
Cheshire East has already set up alternative service delivery vehicles (ASDVs) – operating companies that are owned and controlled by the council. These include Orbitas, which manages cemeteries, crematoria and bereavement services, and Ansa, which is responsible for waste collection and recycling, streetscape services and street cleaning, grounds and parks maintenance, and vehicle fleet management.
Council Leader, Councillor Michael Jones, said: "We have long recognised the need to take a strategic commissioning role so that we can change the way services are provided in order to create opportunities for innovation and greater efficiency.
"This enables us to put residents first and take care of the people as well as the pounds and pence.
"This new company for building and planning services will retain a high-quality, professional team to provide the fullest advice to those who wish to invest in Cheshire East through development or relocation."
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
This won't include the planners (or strategic planning people who are responsible for the LP). This is just planning admin, land charges and building control.
Strangely the business plan and reports say that they have lost staff recently, but doesn't factor in any increases in staff (actually they say they can reduce staffing costs by £80k in restructure). However this is offset by costs of £25k for audit fees and director pay (read Cllr extra allowances).
They also haven't factored in ANY pay increases for staff for 5 years, so I guess they actually forecast more staff leaving. I do wonder how they can actually propose a business plan that is so fundamentally flawed!
Funnily enough (again) their pro/con assessment doesn't include ANY cons for this approach.
http://bit.ly/14zGaTk
I do hope for the staff's sake it works, but I guess it will be the same as orbitas where they make a loss which the council still subsidises, but the councillors still get a nice directors allowance each year.
Imagine a developer going to the new company for professional advice on building control (not planning) for a site which just happens to be on green belt? If development takes place on that site the company gets lots of consultancy work? At this point the Councilor would have two different and competing interests.
Shame on you for persuing such far left ideologies. How on earth can you do this in our MP's constituency?
Let market forces prevail.
Michael Jones is listed as a Director of Manchester Science Parks.
Now he has trumpeted that a Hotel and up-market housing is to be built on the site; what will the role of this new "building and planning consultancy" be at Alderley Park?
It's all jolly confusing, is it not- here was me thinking that the role of the Council was to take away refuse, mend the roads, fund the Police and Fire Services, etc. rather than become venture-capitalists (with our money).