Issue - meetings

To consider a report on the Community Right to Challenge.

(Report attached)

The Committee received a report which detailed local arrangements for the new Community Right to Challenge, which had been introduced in the Localism Act 2011.

The Community Right to Challenge enables relevant bodies (defined by the Act) to submit expressions of interest to deliver services on behalf of the Council, and applies to all public services except services that were protected by secondary legislation.  In this context, all of the services delivered by Redditch Borough Council were open to challenge.

The provisions relating to the Community Right to Challenge had come into force on 27th June 2012.  All of the Councils in Worcestershire were attempting to adopt a consistent approach to managing expressions of interest by complying with the statutory guidance and Regulations.

It was proposed that the local arrangements for managing expressions of interests would be:

• The Council would accept expressions of interest at any time;
• Expressions of interest should be sent to the Council’s Monitoring Officer (or Section 151 Officer);
• That information required to be included in an expression of interest would be as set out in Paragraph 4.2 of the Statutory Guidance.  Following receipt of an expression of interest the Council may ask that the relevant body demonstrated that it met the definition of a relevant body;
• The Council would notify the relevant body of its decision within 12 weeks of receiving the expression of interest;
• The period between an expression of interest being accepted (and notified to the relevant body in writing) and any procurement exercise starting would be no less than 3 months and no longer than 6 months.

Given the Community Right to Challenge had been expected to be in force from 27th June, these arrangements had been published on the Council’s website explaining that they were subject to endorsement by the Committee at this meeting.

RESOLVED that

the local arrangements for managing the Community Right to Challenge, as set out in the report, be approved.