Issue - meetings

A presentation by the Director of Law and Assurance, WSCC.

Declarations of interest:

None

Witnesses:

Tony Kershaw, Director of Law & Assurance, West Sussex County Council.

Ann Charlton, Director of Legal, Democratic & Cultural Services, Surrey County Council

Philip Baker, Assistant Chief Executive, East Sussex County Council.

Elizabeth Culbert, Head of Legal Services, Brighton & Hove City Council

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.           The Committee received a presentation outlining the spread of work across the legal services of all four authorities.

2.           Members noted that childcare and commercial cases accounted for 69% of the legal services workload.

3.           Officers explained that developing a resilient collaborative partnership across the four authorities would enable some of the challenges around finances and recruitment and retention to be addressed, and for expertise to be pooled to allow more specialised cases to be dealt with by the most appropriate person.  It was recognised that building centres of expertise was important and that this would contribute to the generation of some cost savings.   

4.           Officers informed the committee that increasing demand in childcare advocacy cases was challenging and there were some instances where authorities were having to pay external solicitors to take on case work.  The increase of childcare advocacy cases was put down to changes in society’s attitude towards safeguarding and it was suggested that childcare cases typically increase after times of economic challenge, although there was no reason behind the growth in demand being so constant in recent times.

5.           The Committee was informed that the partnership currently had seven advocates, and were trying to recruit a further four in order to get the advocacy team to an optimum size to deal with the growth in demand.  This in turn would help manage savings by reducing reliance on external advocates with higher costs.

6.           The partnership is working with the Court Service to reduce the reliance on paper through the introduction of a digital court system.  This relationship with the Court Service would not have been achievable by a single authority, so the partnership has provided some leverage in this area.

7.           Officers highlighted the importance of all partners having access to a common system and a shared approach to IT, to allow for work to be shared.  Members noted that a shared legal services agreement had been signed and a common Case Management system had been welcomed by lawyers and was working well for all partners.  A plan to align practice management had been developed and was included in the Business Plan.

8.           Members were informed that the partnership had introduced an initial 5% work sharing target as a way of getting staff used to how the partnership would work and as a way of keeping more work in-house.  This was expected to grow.  There was some discussion around charging and how this would operate, however it was expected that all partners would play an equal part in the delivery of work sharing.  In the eventuality that a balance was not being achieved, a charging mechanism would be introduced to ensure parity.

9.           Officers  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14

To provide the Joint Committee with an update on the development and integration of the partnership. 

Cllr David Elkin arrived at the meeting at 14.20 during the discussions on this item.

Declarations of interest:

None

Witnesses:

Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis, Executive Lead Officer for Strategy, Governance and Law, Brighton and Hove City Council

Andrea Kilby, Orbis Public Law Business Development Manager

Ann Charlton, Director of Legal, Democratic and Cultural Services, Surrey County Council

Emma Nash, Orbis Public Law Project Manager

Philip Baker, Assistant Chief Executive, East Sussex County Council

Tony Kershaw, Director of Law, Assurance and Strategy, West Sussex County Council

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.            Officers introduced the report detailing the rationale behind the creation of the Orbis Public Law partnership. Each of the four partner authorities had faced a sharp increase in demand on their legal services departments in recent years driven chiefly by a steep rise in the number of child protection cases. The Committee was advised that pooling resources across the partner authorities would lead to significantly improved resilience across the four legal services teams. Members were further informed that the partnership should enable the sharing of knowledge and expertise in specific areas of law while also reducing reliance on external advocacy services thereby contributing to financial savings across the partnership. Further spending reductions would also be achieved by enabling paralegals to take on a greater volume of the workload thereby reducing reliance on barristers and solicitors.

2.            Members requested further information on the degree to which the four authorities relied on external advocates to help deal with the volume of caseloads. Officers indicated that, at present, each team employed advocates with the expectation being that they would be able to manage a proportion of the expected volume of cases. Where there was a particularly complex case or the number of cases exceeded capacity, it was necessary to use external advocates. For this, and reasons of significant growth in cases in other areas, East Sussex County Council (ESCC) had had a drive to reduce spending on external advocates which meant it had significantly lower expenditure in this area than the other authorities in the partnership. Collective spending on legal costs related to childcare across the four councils in the financial year 2015/16 was £3.25 million of which £1.7m was spent on external advocacy services. The Orbis Public Law partnership would help to reduce costs in this area by creating a single pool for advocacy services as well as facilitating the sharing of specialist legal knowledge across teams.

3.            The Committee was advised that there was an aspiration to develop an electronic court system which would not only to help to reduce costs but would also enable court proceedings to be paperless and more efficient.

4.            Officers highlighted that the partnership would seek opportunities to generate income by offering legal advice to public sector organisations on areas where there is expertise across the partnership. A commercial pathfinder had been created and officers were in the process of developing an organisational structure for Orbis Public Law designed to support income generation. Members  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5

To provide an update on the finance workstream, the financial principles to be used for the partnership and set out the next steps for setting the Orbis Public Law shared budget.

Declarations of interest:

None

Witnesses:

Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis, Executive Lead Officer for Strategy, Governance and Law, Brighton and Hove City Council

Ann Charlton, Director of Legal, Democratic and Cultural Services, Surrey County Council.

Philip Baker, Assistant Chief Executive, East Sussex County Council

Tony Kershaw, Director of Law, Assurance and Strategy, West Sussex County Council

Marie Nickalls, Orbis Public Law Finance Lead, East Sussex County Council

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.            Members received an introduction to the report including details of how financial contributions to and savings from Orbis Public Law would be apportioned across the four constituent organisations. The Committee was advised that savings achieved would be divided according to the amount of money that each organisation committed to the partnership budget as well as factoring in the extent to which each of the partners utilised Orbis Public Law services. The savings achieved through the partnership would then be returned to each sovereign authority as opposed to being retained within the partnership.

2.            Members were further informed that budget contribution ratios by individual authorities could also be flexed in accordance with the amount that each council utilised Orbis Public Law. This would be reviewed annually. The Committee asked whether it would be possible to undertake an in year review of funding contribution ratios. Officers indicated that if use of Orbis Public Law services by an individual authority exceeded 10% of the agreed amount then this would trigger an automatic review of contribution ratios although measures would be put in place to avoid reaching this point. This would be enshrined within the Inter-Authority Agreement (IAA) which was in the process of being drafted. Officers were asked to bring the IAA to the next Joint Committee meeting for consideration.

3.            The Committee inquired as to how external legal services would be funded and were informed that it was proposed that these continued to be paid for by individual authorities. This was due to the fact that budgeting arrangements for external legal services was done differently across the four councils. The intention was, however, to create a single pool for external  legal services which would reduce costs for each authority. Members requested that officers draw up proposals on how external legal services could be paid for through the central Orbis Public Law budget for consideration by the Joint Committee.

4.            Members stressed that without concrete examples it was challenging to develop a picture of how the finances for Orbis Public Law would operate. Officers were therefore asked to provide clear examples of the partnership’s financial arrangements for the next finance update due to be considered by the Joint Committee.

Actions/ further information to be provided:

1.            An item on the Inter-Authority Agreement to be brought to the Orbis Public Law Joint Committee meeting in January 2017.

2.            Officers to model how funding external advocacy services through the central Orbis Public Law budget would operate.

3.            The next finance update for consideration by the Joint Committee should provide clear examples of the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6