Councils continue to explore diverse ways to deliver essential services more efficiently while protecting local jobs and resources. Outsourcing services is one option to control costs but this only brings certainty of contractual costs not true transparency and can't always safeguard local jobs.
Another approach is to set up a trading company and many councils have done so where they have service experience such as waste, street cleaning, housing and social care. However this doesn't always seem like an option if it's an area where councils don't have service experience. This is when utilising a joint venture (JV) model can deliver the best benefits by sharing the risk and the reward.
One example pioneered by Commercial Services is our contingency recruitment agency which enables councils to retain greater control over their temporary workforce, supply chains and long-term workforce planning. Unlike the outsourced model where there can be a loss of managerial oversight, the JV structure creates shared ownership that keeps value, expertise and decision making closer to the communities being served.
Councils benefit from complete transparency, strategic oversight of their recruitment activity with the ability to shape services around local needs.
Covering roles from social care to environmental services, the JV model ensures funding that once flowed to external private providers is instead retained within local government. To date, £7.2m in surplus has been returned to our JV partners, supporting financial resilience and frontline reinvestment.
Benefits also include deepening the councils' connection to their local labour markets. The JVs employ and manage a network of specialist recruiters to source local residents for temporary roles. This approach strengthens small and medium-sized enterprises involvement, boosts employment opportunities and helps reduce off-contract spend. Our JVs have ensured that more than 70% of individuals placed in roles come from the local area.
Councils are better placed to convert temporary roles to permanent and can invest time in accessing hard to reach residents such as the long-term unemployed and care leavers to get them into sustainable roles.
With 94% of councils reporting recruitment and retention challenges, the demand for innovative workforce solutions is only set to grow. JVs offer a proven, community-focused model for building a more resilient and cost-effective local government workforce.
Caroline Wheller is Commercial Development Manager at Commercial Services Group
