HB Public Law set to grow again with potential Aylesbury Vale District Council deal

The expansion of the HB Public Law shared legal service is set to continue with the Cabinet at Aylesbury Vale District Council next week considering whether to approve the delegation of the authority's legal services provision.

Under the plans HB Public Law – the shared legal service run out of Harrow Council – would provide legal services for up to five years, commencing from 1 September. The relation will be governed by an inter authority agreement.

Aylesbury Vale’s Cabinet and Council had agreed at meetings in April this year that the authority's legal service should be delivered through a third party.

The report prepared for next week’s (14 July) Cabinet meeting says: “The supply of appropriate and timely legal advice is fundamental to the smooth running of many of the council’s services. It is however a costly element of support services.

“This has led to the consideration of options for different delivery models being explored as with all services under the New Business Model work stream.”

The report reveals that the costs of the legal service at Aylesbury Vale had been cut from c£742,000 to c£600,000 since 2012/13.

“We believe that we can reduce this further through demand management (ie reducing the volume of legal work), and through different models of service delivery based upon detailed analysis of the demand from services,” it says.

The report discloses that since the April 2015 reports to Cabinet and Council all legal services staff employed by Aylesbury Vale had either left the authority or were on a path to doing so. As a result there were no TUPE considerations.

“The supply of legal services by an external provider will be undertaken therefore on a straightforward contractual provision,” it notes.

Aylesbury Vale will continue to hold a monitoring officer post “for at least the medium term” and will continue with its current arrangement of part-time provision.

The monitoring officer will also act as contract manager for the inter authority agreement with HB Public Law.

The report says that the transition to full provision by HB Public Law should be relatively straightforward as it was already providing interim provision.

HB Public Law was formally launched through the merger of the legal teams at Harrow and Barnet in May 2013.

Hounslow Council delegated its legal function to HB Public Law on a five-year deal from 1 June 2015.

Hugh Peart, Director of Governance and Legal Services at Harrow, was meanwhile appointed to an additional role as Head of Legal at Buckinghamshire County Council in March.

He was due to divide his time between the two local authorities and explore wasy in which their legal functions could work more closely together.