Cambridgeshire authorities sign shared legal service deal

All of Cambridgeshire's district councils have signed an agreement with Cambridgeshire County Council to develop a shared services arrangement, in a deal which also includes the unitary  Peterborough City Council.

The group, which will call itself the Cambridge Legal Services Partnership, has yet to decide how far the integration of the council's legal teams will go, although it has already begun the tendering process for a joint panel, which will be announced in a month's time.

The councils involved are: Cambridgeshire County Council, Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, Fenland District Council, Huntingdonshire District Council and Peterborough City Council. Cambridgeshire is separately in the process of developed a shared services operation with Northamptonshire County Council, which may include legal services although this has yet to ratified by the councils' respective cabinets, with a decision due in July this year. The Cambridge Legal Services Partnership is also looking to include local emergency services and patient care trusts.

Quentin Baker, head of legal services at 72-lawyer Cambridgeshire County Council, told Local Government Lawyer that the group would be looking at a number of shared services models, ranging from the full integration on the lines of Lincolnshire Shared Legal Services through to a looser association with lawyers continuing to be employed by their existing local authorities.

However, Baker was keen to emphasise that the arrangement would not lead to the effective takeover of the district councils involved or result in job losses. Instead, he said, savings would primarily come from a reduction in the use of external advisers which would come from the more efficient utilisation of the councils' in-house lawyers. Savings could also be achieved through the joint procurement of training and library services.

“It's not a takeover [of the districts], it's a partnership,” he said. “There are economies of scale in the delivery of legal services and by pooling our resources we can operate more efficiently. If we save 5% of our budgets as a result, that represents a significant amount of money.”

Cambridge Legal Services Partnership's final business plan is due to be developed by the end of the first quarter of 2011. Cambridge City Council's existing panel arrangement expires next year, at which point it will join the Cambridge Legal Services Partnership panel.