The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A ‘new and fresh start’ will come with the partnership of three councils, including South Holland District Council, according to the authority.
But concerns have been expressed over staff morale and how service delivery will look as it teams up with Boston Borough Council and East Lindsey to create the South East Lincolnshire Partnership.
And leaders are keeping an eye on government ‘devolution’ proposals and looking at the possibility of turning it into one unitary council, something that’s previously also been mooted for Lincolnshire as a whole.
South Holland’s strategic advisor Nathan Elvery told the Joint Performance Monitoring and Policy Development Panel: “It needs to be a new and fresh start.”
At the meeting Coun Tracey Carter raised concerns that South Holland might be left behind with Boston and East Lindsey already in partnership.
She asked why the business plan for the partnership listed how much each council would pay towards redundancy costs’, but that the plan stated there was a ‘no redundency policy and also about plans for more ‘agile working’ or working from home.
Mr Elvery responded: “All their reports are based on there being no redundancy but we’re not sure what’s going to happen in the future so we need to make provision for what those circumstances might be.
“We haven’t engaged directly with staff as at this stage we don’t want to worry them that there may be something that’s coming when there isn’t. All members of staff should be aware of what is happening but also comfortable that nothing is happening at this stage.”
Coun Bryan Alcock told the meeting: “I detect an element of stagnation and we need to get out of that.
“That’s linked to the general morale of the SHDC staff. We need to get on and reassure the staff and take them through this process so that morale is raised. That will obviously improve performance and delivery.”
Panel chairman Andrew Woolf likened it to starting a new school. “Given their own time they all mix and gel together.
We do need to have strong arms around our staff as they’re probably going through some uncertainty and we want to alleviate that.
“There’ll be 1,000 employees and we want to ensure all our current employees are within that. We want to make sure they’re well cared for and supported.”
The meeting heard South Holland resident and current chief executive of both Boston and East Lindsey, Rob Barlow, would take on the role for all three. South Holland would pay 31 per cent of the costs.
Members of the panel were asked about the future of household waste collection by Coun Tracey Carter.
“If you’ve currently got bags as your methodology there’s no reason why it wouldn’t continue moving forward,” said Mr Elvery.
The meeting was also told that there was work on cost of new systems with a ‘huge advantage to one system.’
“The reason we’ve asked it for a whole system piece of work is it maybe on individual systems, the individual case doesn’t stack up, but it if you look at all the systems the shift to one platform provides a bigger benefit,” said Mr Elvery
Three new unitary authorities had recently been formed from district councils merging including one in Cumbria covering a slightly smaller size of population than the proposed South East Lincolnshire Partnership.
Coun Chris Brewis told the meeting he was optimistic: “We’ve got the most fluid moment as far as local government is concerned and I think we’ve got to act very quickly if we’re asked to grab an opportunity.”
