Decision details

Purpose of Report: The Joint Head of Health & Safety (H&S) for York and North Yorkshire Councils has spent the last year restructuring at North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) and looking at best practice across both H&S services. To ensure resilience and best use of resources staff need to start working as one workforce so resources and skills can be moved across both services.

The development of a single workforce will require a decision in the short term to second the remaining 5 City of York Council (CYC) staff to NYCC on their current pay grade This would be robustly set to up with formal secondment agreements for CYC staff and an equally robust Service Level Agreement (SLA) to ensure that the form, resilience and quality of H&S service received by CYC is at least maintained if not improved.

This arrangement would be short term to last no more than a year, and during this time an options paper and business case will come to Executive to set up a formally constituted shared organisation with the options around the various service delivery models available to do so.

The Executive Member is asked to approve the secondment of 5 employees from the City of York Health and Safety Team to North Yorkshire County Council to ensure resilience and best use of resources.

Resolved:

(i)            That  the progress of closer working between North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) and City of York Council (CYC) Health & Safety (H&S) Teams operating under a single Head of H&S be noted.

(ii)          That the secondment of five employees from the CYC H&S team to NYCC to ensure resilience and best use of resources be endorsed.

(iii)        That an interim report be received at a future Executive Member for Environment Decision Session.

Reason: To ensure the Executive Member and residents are informed of the CYC/NYCC approach to ensuring the H&S services are resilient and are better able to support the two organisations.