Councillor Chris Jones presented a report by the Director of Adult Social Services which set out a revised proposal to develop an alternative Wirral based delivery organisation to be co-designed with key stakeholders including staff and parents/carers.

The report superseded the previous Cabinet report recommendation setting out the proposed development of two separate business cases as follows:

(1)  The Director of Adult Social Services be requested to further explore Option 2 with the neighbouring Local Authorities, and submit a final report in February 2014 setting out the full business case; and

(2)  Parents/Carers Group be authorised to develop a business case in relation to their proposal to develop a social enterprise model.

The Cabinet noted that the revised proposal was to build a single business case to develop a Local Authority Trading Company (LATC) model that incorporated the best elements of the above options into a cohesive single Wirral based model.  It would include design principles that were presented through the Heswall Carers’ business case.

Attached to the Director’s report were:

(1)  Review of New Service Delivery Model for Day Services and Day Opportunities by V4 Services as Appendix 1;

(2)  Shared Service model with Cheshire West and Chester Council as Appendix 2; and

(3)  Co-design Principles as Appendix 3.

Councillor Phil Davies informed the Cabinet that he was delighted that a proposal that included the best of the two previous options had been put forward and it was great that the Council was working closely with parent carers around this model. He was looking forward to seeing how it was developed.

RESOLVED: That

(1)  the development of a Wirral Council Local Authority Trading Company model be agreed;

(2)  officers be requested to progress the development of the Co-design Project Group with key stakeholders including staff and parent/carers;

(3)  a further progress report that includes the full project plan and implementation timeline be presented to the Cabinet in June 2014;

(4)  the work undertaken to date that has enabled us to take this work forward be acknowledged; and

(5)  the findings of the feasibility study carried out by V4 be noted along with the fact that this is a working document which will be refined and completed to accompany the report to be presented to the Cabinet in June 2014.