Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies were received from Cllr Joss Bigmore, Cllr James Brooker, Cllr George Murray and Cllr Danielle Newson.

There were no disclosures of interest.

To agree the minutes of the last meeting, held on 3 June 2024.

Having acknowledged that much time had elapsed since its last meeting, held on 3 June 2024, the Committee agreed the minutes of that meeting as a correct record.

It was confirmed that the Risk Register would be reviewed at the Committee meeting scheduled for 15 May 2025.

The Committee considered a report in respect of the refreshing of the collaboration programme with a new focus on achieving the benefits of collaboration between Guildford and Waverley Borough Councils in the lead up to local government reorganisation (LGR).  The report recommended that the vision and objectives of the programme be updated to reflect the current context.

The Joint Leadership Team had re-committed to collaboration and were considering the benefits of joint posts and creation of joint functions within their services.  Appendix 1 of the report contained a new case for collaboration template which had been created to capture the benefits, risks and costs of collaboration initiatives for the Committee’s approval.

The transformation programme would support services to identify collaboration opportunities and collate the proposals into a portfolio of change, with a collaboration business case, plan and risk management approach which would be submitted to a future meeting of the Committee.

The Chairman commented that the 2023 collaboration vision statement pre-dated LGR and the Executives of both Councils were proposing to meet jointly to agree and submit an appropriate recommendation to incorporate LGR.  In addition to acknowledging LGR, the inclusion of a reference to it in the vision was intended to give momentum to the collaboration during the next two years leading up to anticipated unitarisation, which was likely to include both Guildford and Waverley, placing each Council in the strongest position going forward.

By way of context, the Joint Chief Executive advised that it appeared that members of both Council’s sought a reset in respect of the collaboration, and in particular, for that exercise to set out the business case for collaboration.  This would involve looking back to the evidential case and identifying the next steps intended to be taken, together with the associated benefits and costs of those steps and the expected timeline.  This information should be articulated in a way that was proportionate to the LGR process currently in progression.  To date, the collaboration had not progressed in as rigorous and structured manner as desired and some steps had been taken to address this and strike a balance between achieving the required pace and momentum whilst ensuring there was rigour and structure to satisfy best value requirements.  The comments of the Chairman and Joint Chief Executive were endorsed.

The Committee was advised that press coverage implying that there may be a single unitary authority with a Mayor for Surrey as a means to tackle debt was merely speculation.  It was likely to have arisen from central Government’s request for a single unitary option to be included in the reports from Surrey County Council and from the Surrey District and Borough Councils as a baseline comparator against the favoured options.  The Government had sought a number of counter-factuals against which a case could be made.  Whilst the point that none of the twelve Councils in Surrey supported a single unitary option had been clearly articulated, there was a slight concern that the Government may force one on  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.