Norfolk set to create Chief Legal Officer role and press ahead with ABS

The full council at Norfolk County Council will next week consider whether to create a new post of Chief Legal Officer (CLO) as part of a wider restructuring of its corporate strategy, support and finance functions.

The move comes after the authority’s Policy & Resources Committee last month separately backed plans for nplaw, the shared legal service based at the county, to establish an alternative business structure (ABS).

A report prepared ahead of the full council meeting on 12 December said the establishment of the CLO role was one of a number of recommendations following an external review.

These recommendations would enable the corporate strategy, support and finance functions “to refocus resources, ensuring front line services are supported in the delivery of priorities whilst also providing the strategic direction and stewardship required for the council as a whole”.

The appointment of a CLO will ensure that Norfolk has legal counsel and a monitoring officer distinct from nplaw, the council’s trading arm, the report said. Under the proposals accountability for Democratic Services is to be brought within the CLO’s remit.

It has been proposed that Victoria McNeill, who currently holds the dual roles of Head of Law and Monitoring Officer at the county council and Practice Director of nplaw, will become CLO, should the changes be approved next week.

McNeill said: “The CLO role will encompass the strategic legal advice and support to the county council, member services, coroners and registrars and will have a commissioning role in relation to nplaw. The Chief Legal Officer will report directly to the Managing Director.”

Other changes as part of the restructuring include:

• Formally realigning ICT and Procurement into the Finance Department.
• Transferring transactional HR services to Finance.
• Aligning the council’s strategic functions of HR, Communications, Intelligence and Strategy and Delivery under a single head of service - Strategy Director.

The report said that – based on the grades recommended to the council’s Personnel Committee of 5 December 2016 for the Director of Finance, Strategy Director, Chief Legal Officer and Head of HR and indicative grades for posts yet to be evaluated – the proposed structure would save in the region of £73,000 (based on top of salary scales) compared to previous arrangements.

On the establishment of the ABS, the Policy & Resources Committee last month resolved to:

1. agree that a wholly owned county council company be incorporated.
2. agree that the Executive Director of Finance and the Head of Law may each take all necessary steps so that the company may be licensed by the SRA as an ABS.
3. agree to recommend to the Constitution Advisory Group that the council’s constitution be amended to enable the establishment of the company, with the county council as sole shareholder and operating under the control of two directors who are solicitors (as required by regulation).
4. agree that the directors of the company will be the Practice Director and the Assistant Practice Director, nplaw to fulfil the function of being in day to day control of the company.
5. note that the contracts of employment of all nplaw staff will be amended to allow them to be employed by both the county council and the company.

A report prepared for the meeting of the Policy & Resources Committee explained that nplaw would continue to pursue as much business as possible trading as nplaw within the current structure and regulations, and that the company would only trade in circumstances where nplaw could not undertake the work directly.

“To satisfy SRA requirements and ensure that the activities of the company are maintained entirely separately from the nplaw in-house service, the new company will be branded independently from the in-house service,” it added. The ABS is to be known as Anglia Law Limited.

The report proposed that all legal work currently undertaken for Norfolk County Council and work undertaken as part of existing trading activities would remain with the current nplaw shared service.

“The company will only undertake work that cannot be undertaken by the in-house service,” it added. “This is because any net profits generated by the company are subject to corporation tax at 20%, therefore to place all trading activity within the company may not make commercial sense. We will ensure that the company bears a proportion of expenditure.”

The report suggested that in the first instance the work undertaken by the ABS would be relatively small in comparison to that carried out by nplaw. There will also be an initial bedding in period, whilst work opportunities are explored. “In the absence of a licence for an ABS in place, it is not possible to start those initial approaches to the wider market,” the report noted.

It also said a business plan was being prepared setting out the governance arrangements, finance, marketing and regulatory matters. An experienced solicitor within nplaw is to be identified as the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice for the ABS and the Practice Manager is to be identified as the Compliance Officer for Finance and Administration.

The report said the establishment of the ABS would act as a mechanism allowing nplaw to achieve growth through increasing its client base. “As a separate legal entity the ABS will be able to work for organisations other than local authorities and public sector bodies.”

Initial forecasting had identified additional surplus of £50,000 to £300,000 from 2017/18 through to 2019/20 respectively, “which would be achieved through adopting a growth strategy”.