Last updated 19:29, Thursday, 04 December 2008

PROPOSALS for shared management of Allerdale Borough and Carlisle City councils are to be discussed next month.

Allerdale’s executive committee, on Wednesday, agreed to forward an assessment of the project, by Serco Consulting, to the overview and scrutiny committee for consideration and comment later this month.

The comments will then be considered at a meeting of the executive committee on January 7, alongside a similar meeting in Carlisle.

The Serco report, written in October, suggests that reverting to separate chief executives in place of the current joint post would cost £310,000 and the case for doing so is weak, retrograde and ultimately imperils both authorities.

Making permanent the current arrangement, whereby interim chief executive Maggie Mooney works for each council for 2.5 days each week, would save £166,000 in the first year and £116,000 annually after that, the report said.

The report recommends that the councils, while retaining their identities, should agree a joint reform programme including development of a combined leadership and service structure, merger and reduction of the senior management teams and the development of business cases for service sharing and use of the programme to re-energise enhanced two-tier working across the county.

If approved, the top-level shake-up would see the number of service directors between both councils cut from eight to three. The number of service heads would drop from 19 to nine.

The merged senior management team, the report suggests, would secure an annual saving of £1.1m.

Coun David Wilson told Wednesday’s meeting that Allerdale staff were not happy with the situation, some feeling left out of the information loop.

But director of strategic resources Nick Fardon said the council was doing all it could to keep staff up-to-date with developments.