PPPexit: council to go it alone to improve help to residents

Wokingham Borough Council is planning to quit a joint body that aims to help residents with problems such as nuisance neighbours.

For the past decade, it has been part of a joint body with other local authorities, known as the Public Protection Partnership or PPP. Now it is intending to hand in its notice, giving 12 months for it to organise its own solution.

The partnership is with West Berkshire council and Bracknell Forest, but following the vote, the services will be brought back inhouse, over the next 12 months. Some services would be outsourced or shared if appropriate.

Introducing the plan, council leader Cllr John Halsall said that it was “our neighbourhoods’ policy”, and that the council’s ambition was “to provide a wraparound service to our residents that keep them safe, secure, and happy”.

He added: “To provide that wraparound service, we need to repatriate the control of the more than 100 pieces of legislation, which we delegated to West Berks and then subsequently to the PPP. Indeed, currently our residents blame us and hold us responsible for these duties. They are more than a little puzzled that we do not have any authority at the moment; the PPP works at our request, but we do not have the power to set their priorities to ensure that any resident has the service that they have the right to expect nor that which we wish to give.”

This would, he argued, allow the council to tailor the service delivery which would give a clearer response to issues that communities face, such as anti-social behaviour, fly tipping, unauthorised encampments, noise, bonfires, neighbourhood disputes.

It would be integrated into other council services, such as Localities, Community Safety, Legal, and Children’s and Adults.

Cllr Halsall said: “This will make better use of the capacity of existing locality officers offering earlier incisive intervention and prevention. It is also anticipated that this will engender effective joined up professional responses across the Council’s service specialisms (safety, enforcement, environmental health), with swift responses, resulting in increased resident satisfaction, and potentially efficiencies.

“The increased crime rate in Wokingham town and the death of Sarah Everard underwrite our need to be active in all areas in our community. We cannot leave it to others. We have to take responsibility.

“Initially, we shall replicate what currently exists but no doubt in time the service will dynamically respond to resident demands on a real time basis.”

Lib Dem leader Cllr Lindsay Ferris called for an amendment to the motion, saying that his party agreed a change was needed but a back-up plan was needed should there be a problem with the year-long timescale and they had concern over the costs.

“These two issues are the main differences between the two groups, we both want a better, much more locally focused service that meets the needs of our local residents,” he said.

Cllr Prue Bray backed up Cllr Ferris, and said: “Why is abandoning the shared service the answer? We will have a less resilient service with fewer specialist staff, and less ability to spread overhead costs.”

She added: “We are being asked to vote through an irreversible process of leaving the partnership before we have any concrete plans for what we would replace it with, and only a few months to come up with them.”

And she also called for cross-party involvement in setting this new service up.

Cllr Stephen Conway (Lib Dem, Twyford) said that the amendment was the right way forward.

Cllr John Kaiser said: “This is one of the things residents are asking for … these are things neighbours need urgently. As a council we have the resources, we have the legal services already. I’m all in favour of supporting the original paper.”

Cllr Gary Cowan (Independent, Arborfield) said that Cllr Kaiser had made very valid points, and that Cllr Ferris was right to raise concerns over the withdrawal being the nuclear option. As such, he supported the amendment.

Cllr Halsall said that the council needed an agreement that worked well and the council had huge problems with issues such as fly-tipping and they needed to be unfeterred by bringing it back in house, and he couldn’t support the amendment.

After a vote which saw this amendmen dismissed, Cllr Rachel Burgess (Lab, Norreys) raised a number of issues including staffing, whether it would lead to redundancies, and whether there were benefits from being part of a larger group for example tackling modern slavery and smuggling.

Cllr Andy Croy (Lab, Bulmershe and Whitegates) argued that the decision to quit the shared partnership should be subject to debate by the overview and scrutiny committee, but nothing had been raised in its meetings.

“This has dropped out of nowhere, which makes us uncomfortable,” he said, warning that it could lead to privatisation of services rather than genuinely bringing services in house.

Responding, Cllr Halsall said that: “My policy over the past two years has been to encourage staff to be bold .. and to be proud of working for Wokingham borough. Covid has shown the success of that policy.”

The motion was passed.