South Holland District Council has officially ratified its intention to end the sharing of services with Breckland.
At a special meeting of the council last night (Wednesday) councillors voted through the recommendation to end the link up between the two councils which saw them share some services and personnel.
Lord Gary Porter, leader of South Holland District Council, told the meeting that “very good” conversations had taken place with two other councils in Lincolnshire about South Holland partnering with those instead.
Lord Porter said: “The partnership is ending with Breckland not through any fault of the partnership or the members of staff.
“All the members of staff for the last 10 years have done a fantastic job of delivering heavy duty front line services for both councils and doing it at a considerably lower cost than we were doing before we entered into the partnership.
“The choice to move to separation now comes out of three things. One is the move back to place based working through COVID. We’ve released that a lot of pressure is being put on staff trying to work across two counties and the need to consolidate that through one county.
“The second was a move by county councils generally in the country to move to a local government reorganisation which will move away from district councils across the country.
“We thought it was best for our rate payers and tax payers that governance for Lincolnshire should be kept to a lower level.
“It’s not an us or them move. It’s about making sure we’re better place to enable us to come up with a resilient model for the people of Lincolnshire and more importantly the people of South Holland.
“An opportunity arose as our chief executive retired and on that basis we all know from past experiences we know chief executives, not intentionally, are the biggest block to doing shared service arrangement.
“We’ve decided it’s the most opportune moment to seek a new partner in Lincolnshire and we’ve got a very good conversations going with two prospective partners so we’re well placed to leave the partnership with Breckland and enter a new one in Lincolnshire.”
