Agenda item

Borough Solicitor and the Head of Law – Litigation and Business Development (One Legal) and Darren Knight, Executive Director – People & Change (CBC)

Objective: One Legal are a commissioned service like Ubico and Publica.  This is an opportunity for members to understand what One Legal is doing well, where are the priorities for improvement and how the quality of service to clients, including Cheltenham Borough Council (CBC), is measured

The Chairman reminded members that this was an opportunity for members to understand what One Legal was doing well, where there were priorities for improvement and how the quality of service was measured.  He welcomed the Borough Solicitor and Head of Law – Litigation and Business Development from One Legal, as well as Darren Knight as the Commissioning Officer and Gill Morris, the Client Officer from CBC.  

The Borough Solicitor welcomed the opportunity to come and speak to members about One Legal and having circulated a paper with the agenda, outlined some key points.  One Legal started in 2009 and at that time was a shared service between CBC and Tewkesbury Borough Council, the main drivers for which were cost savings, which proved quite substantial for both authorities and importantly, to build resilience.  The service had grown over the years with Gloucester City joining in 2015 and then in October last year, Stroud District.  In addition, One Legal provided legal support to other organisations and related bodies including Cheltenham Borough Homes (CBH), Ubico and the Police and the charges to these organisations supported the budget and costs to the partner councils.  Governance was provided in the form of the Joint Management Liaison Group (JMLG) which comprised of two members and one senior officer from each of the partner authorities.  As an organisation, One Legal currently had 35 permanent members of staff, an increase from16 in 2009 and it was noted that there were vacant posts which they were in the process of recruiting. 

In the past, as well as having carried out all of their day to day tasks (property sales, purchases, leases, licenses, procurement, litigation and planning) they had also supported and provided advice to all of the partners  and various committees (Licensing and Planning).  It had been a challenging 12 months for everyone, not least because of having to get to grips with working from home but also maintaining the day job at the same time as responding to the additional challenges brought on by the pandemic, which had given rise to interpretation of a myriad of regulations and other related advice.  Also, over the last year they had been working on developing a new case management system, as well as having, as mentioned, welcomed Stroud District to the partnership.  Particular projects of importance to CBC on which they have worked and advised included major redevelopment regeneration projects such as the CBC and CBH new build programme and some major and complex land transactions such as Maud’s Elm and the Minster Innovation Project, as well as having provided support in relation to anti-social behaviour and supported the development of planning policies, development management and in resisting the High Court challenge to the local plan.

Looking forward their current priorities included reviewing the business plan and completing the implementation of the new case management system and once that had been done they would devise, with partners and the JMLG, their key performance indicators.  A new development which had the support of the JMLG was a review of the Operating Model for the service and this was is in recognition of the exponential changes that had taken place since the partnership was originally established in 2009, in the nature of local authority legal work and client demand.  This review would develop an operating model that reflected the business that the partnership authorities currently required and put One Legal in a position to best meet the challenges and demands of all of its partners and bodies that it does work for over the next 5 -10 years. 

The Borough Solicitor and Head of Law gave the following responses to member questions:

·         One Legal was the first shared service in the county and actually the first shared legal service in the region; so the decision to establish it was undoubtedly an innovative one.  There was however, no premium for new joiner.  Instead, a business case was developed for any potential new partners and if there were costs related to their joining then they were paid separately to the cost of providing the legal service.  One Legal received the legal budget, staff and vacancies (staff would TUPE over) and the business plan would include detailed costs for any management or other charges that had to flow from the decision; this all forms part of the business case. 

·         One Legal did have a strong local authority bias and in fact had undertaken work for other local authorities, including every other local authority in this county and actually also worked for Herefordshire some years back.    Forest of Dean and Cotswolds district councils were considering the future of their legal services but One Legal did not advertise for new business, it is all word of mouth at the moment.  The question of whether they could become too big formed part of the reason why they were revisiting their operating model because, in fact, in terms of management capacity they had less now than they did when they started in 2009 (and the service has doubled in size).  They needed to look at what they already had before they could consider taking on any other partners and this formed part of the rationale for having the review. 

·         Client demands had changed, as had their expertise and One Legal were carrying vacancies in one particular area, so there was an element of pressure in terms of capacity.  Again, this was why the review of the operating model was so important in establishing what would be possible and sustainable over the next 5-10 years, minimising the need for external legal expenses which was required at the moment, as there were major projects which they simply did not have the capacity to support.  Going forward it was hoped that the new operating model would allow One Legal capacity to bring more in house.

·         There were no teams for each authority, it was one combined team and this was how they achieved increased resilience.  The team was divided into different areas of law, but there is a lead lawyer for each partner; Sarah Farooqi was the lead liaison officer for Cheltenham but the entire team worked across the whole partnership.

·         Conflicts were managed within the team, with different officers assigned to different authorities and it was noted that these conflicts were very rare.  The agreement stated that where a conflict is identified which One Legal were unable to deal with in-house and one partner had to engage external legal services, the partnership will pay for it so that no one party is disadvantaged by a conflict having to be managed this way.  There were also robust protocols and protection measures in place meaning that access to certain files on the computer system could be restricted as necessary.  

·         Parish council conduct and interests went with the Monitoring Officer role held by the Borough Solicitor. There was nothing within the rules to prevent One Legal from providing legal services to parish councils, but they simply did not have the resources to be able to offer that to all the parish councils within the partner areas; there were far more in Stroud and Tewkesbury than in Cheltenham and Gloucester.   However, One Legal recognised that there was a gap in the market having been approached by numerous parish councils, a number of times.  If the partner authorities wanted to be brave and resource it then there would be nothing to prevent One Legal from being able to offer this service, but current resources would not allow for it. 

·         The budget was based on the amount legal of spend that the authorities bring with them combined and then a percentage was calculated based on that amount.  This will need to be reviewed if One Legal were to take on work that was currently being externalised in terms of major projects, as these wouldn’t fall evenly between the partners, so the charging mechanism would need to be reviewed. There had been some growth over the years and this had been paid for with income, which at the lower level had consistently been exceeded to offset the cost to the partners, but the target had now been increased to a very ambitious £300k a year.  Day to day work was included within the percentage price, but project work and any major legal issues would be charged as extraordinary work and the authority would either pay for the backfill of day-to-day work or pay to get the work commissioned. 

·         One Legal did previously produce KPIs but the JMLG felt that they were no longer relevant and as such there had been none for the last two years, though this was being reviewed in tandem with the new case management system.  One Legal do send out questionnaires to client officers and there were occasionally issues that came to their attention, but generally satisfaction levels were high. 

·         Priority tensions were negotiated with the officers from the individual authorities in order to establish which in fact should take priority, though it was rare for this to happen and fortunately the priorities tended to follow each other rather than converge.  It was noted that compliance with the court directions tended to be the priority. 

·         There was no appetite for time charging in 2009 or indeed still as it was felt that this resulted in a delay in which legal advice was sought.  However, One Legal did record their time and did have target hours set, and do charge actual time for third party clients at a differential rate depending on experience of the lawyer.  It would be possible to provide this information but it would take some time to pull together and the new case management system would provide better management information, more easily.  It was also the case that from time to time One Legal worked on shared files, Covid regulations was an example, where a piece of work was shared across all partners. 

·         Attracting and retaining staff was a challenge shared by all local authorities, though One Legal had successfully recruited 9-10 new members of staff over the last year, of all levels, including paralegals, which presented opportunities to members of the team.  A key element of the new operating model would be how to attract and retain quality staff, as well as succession planning

 The Executive Director – People & Change, as the lead commissioner explained that from the council perspective One Legal provided a good reliable service.  He was pleased that investment was being made in the case management system, which would undoubtedly be hugely beneficial to them.  An updated operating model would also enable them to address salary challenges and allow for more opportunities to grow third party income, whilst being able to support the councils with more complex legal matters that came with councils being more commercial and complex. 

As the client officer, Gill Morris’ role was about service improvement and she has a very good relationship with One Legal and they always welcomed feedback and try and respond positively.  She was working closely with them on the case management system and offered support in other areas where needed.  She assured members that One Legal wanted to improve and she felt that it was positive that they recognised that the council was evolving and wanted to move forward with us.

The Chair thanked officers for their attendance and for what he felt had been a really useful overview of the One Legal service and asked that they come back in 12 months to present KPIs and update on the new operating model.