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Thirteen districts in Essex have joined the county council to form a new partnership to provide legal services. Enid Allen describes its operation. All public services face a major challenge in the years ahead, as resources become scarcer – and local government will feel this as acutely as any. Authorities in the Essex Legal Services Partnership Basildon DC Braintree DC Brentwood DC Castle Point DC Chelmsford BC Colchester BC Essex CC Harlow DC Maldon DC Rochford DC Southend-on-Sea Council Thurrock Council Uttlesford DC The in-house legal team has a particular part to play as authorities look to tackle budget pressures with even more efficient and flexible approaches to meet the needs of local people. New models for commissioning, and meeting the governance matters that will arise from such initiatives as Total Place keep legal teams on their toes, as well as the need to resource day-to-day business. Essex Legal Services Partnership has created a new model for local government services, which enables the teams to improve services to clients and communities. The new way of working provides a ‘virtual' team approach, with each council maintaining its own legal experts yet pooling resources to meet client needs, continually develop learning, and reducing the demand for external legal firms to meet capacity gaps. Most legal teams place some of their work with the private sector providers and, to some extent, that will always be necessary, particularly for complex pieces of work which could not be sustained in-house. But much work is externalised which could be ‘taken up' by other authorities, which may, at any moment, have capacity in a particular area of the law. The private sector, not surprisingly, has far higher hourly rates than local government practitioners. A partnership model across the public sector can provide services to the local government market which create real savings without needing complex governance arrangements that sometimes frighten off those who would like to develop shared services, but feel the arrangements can be too complex. Eighteen months ago, 13 of the local authorities in Essex, including the county council and the two unitary councils – Southend and Thurrock – joined together to form Essex Legal Services Partnership (ELSP), creating an internal marketplace which ‘trades' services over a discrete extranet at fixed prices – no negotiation needed. Users know the price, and they can see the personnel in another authority who can meet their needs for a particular piece of legal work. Joint appointments have been made, including a commercial lawyer, to address one of the most costly areas of legal expertise, with demand risk being taken, in this instance, by the county council. This appointment alone would have been unsustainable for all of the councils, except the county, and bought-in services would have met need as it arose. Employment law is another area that a shared resource can provide at much lower rates. ELSP provides training across all the partners, procurement of law libraries and other essentials for lawyers, and builds a community of interest through technology and a monthly newsletter to all the staff. There are about 200 staff now in the partnership who can communicate and engage in dialogue with their opposite numbers in the other authorities over the extranet. Partners can chose which aspects of the partnership programme they participate in, which is helpful to those who initially were concerned about the loss of autonomy from sharing a service, a common perceived barrier in the development of joint arrangements. ELSP now has special interest groups which share their topic discussions on such matters as: property planning housing adult social care standards and governance licensing Standards investigations are often conducted by another partner authority, which is helpful to the monitoring officer in the council in which the alleged breach of the code of conduct arises. The costs of investigations, if externalised to the private sector, can run to many thousands of pounds. When conducted at the internal market rate by a fellow legal expert, costs are saved and expertise continues to be retained in local government. The partners continue to measure the benefits to ensure the outcomes sought are being delivered. The partnership's clients have been surveyed to ensure ELSP continues to meet demand, and works to constantly improve satisfaction, as well as reducing costs. Training budgets can be under pressure in the present climate, but ELSP has managed to increase access to affordable training opportunities for the teams and at the same time, reduce costs significantly. We have a greater ability to attract City firms to come to ELSP and provide seminars on given subjects at little or no cost. Other training providers with membership schemes allow ELSP partners to access courses for one annual subscription, rather than the same subscription being payable by each authority – an instant saving in one case of more than £7,000. The next bold step is being supported financially by the Eastern region RIEP. This is a feasibility study for a shared case-management system across all the partners which will allow flexibility for work to flow across the Essex legal extranet, and will also provide efficiencies across all the practices. It is intended that the county council's existing system will be the hub which will make the technology within reach of all the authorities, building on the county's investment and supported by their business team. Enid Allen is programme adviser for the ELSP Programme

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WHITEHALL

A wider brief to share legal costs

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