MEETINGS TO DISCUSS SHARED SERVICES PLANS

Proposals to share services between councils in East Kent are going forward to three different council meetings in Thanet over the next few weeks. (February)
The project aims to provide cost effective services across East Kent and make the best possible use of the individual councils' resources and staff expertise.

In total, three different schemes will be discussed. The first is the East Kent Joint Waste Project, which involves Canterbury, Dover, Shepway and Thanet working on a ground breaking partnership with Kent County Council, to introduce common collection arrangements for waste and recycling in all four districts over the next four years.

The second is for an East Kent Shared Housing Service, which would see Canterbury, Dover, Shepway and Thanet councils jointly managing council housing in East Kent. Sharing the service is expected to deliver improvements for tenants and bring savings, which would be re-invested into council housing services.

The final proposal would see a number of services being shared between Canterbury, Dover and Thanet councils, including revenues and benefits, IT, building control and customer services, including face to face and telephone.

Cllr. Martin Wise, Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Services, said: "Everyone is well aware of the pressures that councils are facing to save money. We're no exception to that. Over the next five years, we have to find savings of more than £6 million. It's not a new position to us, as we've had to make significant savings over the last few years, but as time goes on, finding savings becomes harder and harder. We are determined that the level of services we provide remains at an acceptable level for our residents and we believe that one of the ways that we can achieve this is by sharing services with our neighbouring councils, which is why we're looking at this project. It's not all about saving money though. It's also about providing more resilience to our services and looking at how we can improve in the future."

The first meeting to look at the three different proposals will be an Extraordinary Meeting of the council's Overview and Scrutiny Panel, which begins at 10am on Thursday 4 February. Any proposals coming from this meeting will then go forward to the council's Cabinet, which is due to meet at 7pm on Thursday 11 February. All councillors will then be able to have their say on the plans, when Full Council meets in an Extraordinary Meeting at 7pm on Thursday 18 February.

All three meetings take place in the council chamber at the council offices in Cecil Street, Margate and all the meetings are open to the public.