Agenda item

Decision

RESOLVED TO RECOMMEND that:

1.     The Borough Council’s Building Control service is transferred to Broste Rivers Limited, holding company of Hertfordshire Building Control Limited and The Building Control (Hertfordshire) Company Ltd. on the terms set out in the Cabinet report.

2.     Authority be delegated to the Chief Executive as Head of Paid Service to agree any final and outstanding technical, financial and operational matters to be concluded in effecting the proposed transfer of the Building Control service and to authorise the completion of the respective Services  Agreement, Inter-Authority Agreement , Shareholder’s Agreement and Articles of Association with Hertfordshire Building Control Ltd., together with any other legal agreements and documents which are required to give effect to the transfer.

3.     An increase in the Building Control revenue budget for 2020/21 of £40k p.a.

4.     The draw down of £187k from reserves to fund the one off initial membership purchase, £152k and subsequent £35k set up costs of transferring the service to HBC Ltd.

5.     The following Officers are confirmed to serve in regard to Broste Rivers Limited as follows: The Chief Executive (as representative of Dacorum Borough Council as shareholder; The Corporate Director (Housing & Regeneration) as Director of Broste Rivers Limited and subsidiary companies; and the Group Manager – Development Management and Planning to the Commissioning Group.

6.     To pass a resolution to delegate statutory Building Control functions to one of the Building Control authorities (“LA1”).

Corporate objectives

The report supports the corporate objectives of:

A clean, safe and enjoyable environment – a sustainable and well-functioning Building Control service in the long term will continue to ensure that new buildings are constructed to safe standards in compliance with the national Building Regulations, and that an effective service to deal with the public safety issues of dangerous structures as they arise can continue to be provided and delivered effectively

Delivering an efficient and modern Council – The proposals aim to provide a resilient Building Control service in the public interest and offer the best available value for money to the local tax payer.

Monitoring Officer

Pursuant to section 101 of the Local Government Act 1972, any function of a local authority may be delegated to another local authority.  Building control is a statutory function within which certain functions cannot be delegated to any external body (other than another local authority) even if the body itself is wholly owned by other local authorities.

Further to the above, where a local authority operates under executive arrangements, such delegations can only be made under Regulation 5(2)(a) of The Local Authorities (Arrangements for the Discharge of Functions) (England) Regulations 2012.   Agreement to Recommendation 4 above would fulfil the necessary requirements with regards to delegation.

 Hertfordshire Building Control Ltd has been set up as a “Teckal” company under regulation 12 of the Public Contract Regulations 2015, which means that it can benefit from contracts for works, services or supply from its controlling Contracting Authority (or Authorities) without having to go through a competitive tender process,

In order to qualify as a Teckal company the following circumstances must exist:

•          The Contracting Authority/ies must exercise a control which is similar to that which it exercises over its/their own departments – this means it/they must exercise a decisive influence over both strategic objectives and significant decisions of the controlled company either itself or through another subsidiary; and

•          More than 80% of the activities of the company must be carried out in the performance of tasks entrusted to it by the controlling Contracting Authority/ies.

Therefore as long at the above circumstances continue to exist then the Council can lawfully join the company and agree a service contract with the partnering authorities.

There are various agreements which the Council will need to agree as noted in the report and these are currently being reviewed by the Planning and Legal Teams.  Authority is delegated to the Chief Executive to approve these documents once the Council are satisfied with their content.

Deputy S.151 Officer

The DBC Building control service has not delivered a balanced budget for the last 3 years with an average overspend of £150k p.a. and is currently projecting an in year pressure of circa £68K.

All options explored for the future of Dacorum building control required growth and the proposed option is the most cost effective ongoing revenue solution evaluated, and would represent a cash saving on the existing projected revenue expenditure and that of the last 3 years.

The membership of HBC is expected to bring resilience and deliver economies of scale to the building control service, whilst also providing security as a wider Hertfordshire building control function.

Advice

Councillor G Sutton introduced the report and said a previous report came before Cabinet in June which received a lot of support. The background to this report is that the in-house service has had a number of issues including a lack of resilience, a dependence on agency staff and trouble recruiting full time staff. This report is a result of looking at alternative services and the preferred option was the Hertfordshire Building Service. J Doe and his team have put together the financial, staff and admin details and this thorough report show it is a credible option. This will go to Council next week and go live from 1^st October.

The discussion moved into part 2.

Recommendations agreed.