Decision details

The Cabinet Member:

a)       Approved Derbyshire County Council (DCC) officers to work in partnership with Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) in the joint development, appointment and implementation of a Digital Connectivity Manager, where NCC covers 60% of the costs of the role and DCC covers the remaining 40%.

b)       Approved in principle to sign a two year service level agreement (SLA) with NCC that set out the core objectives, workload responsibilities and performance standards for the postholder, with delegated authority given to the Executive Director – Place to finalise the SLA, in consultation with the Director of Legal and Democratic Services.

To ensure DCC makes best use of its limited financial resources whilst achieving access to senior level, digital expertise to support continued, high quality, service delivery.

Option 1: Do-nothing and not support the development and appointment of a shared ‘Digital Connectivity Manager’ resource. The current level of staffing and expertise within DCC is limited and budget constraints mean that any substantive increase in resource at the moment is highly unlikely. Although the current infrastructure contracts with BT have/ are coming to an end, it is expected that Government will launch a new Gigabit programme and access to capacity and senior level expertise will be required to ensure this, and implementation of the Digital Strategy are achievable. Therefore, this is not considered an appropriate option.

Option 2: Do something different. DCC could align budget and create a similar, senior-level digital resource. However, market intelligence suggests there is increasing competition and an already limited pool of potential applicants operating in this field so to recruit to an additional role would not be in the interests of best value and would not be efficient. Also, the Economy and Regeneration directorate has to make substantial savings over the next 12 months – and this specifically includes the Sustainable Growth Service – so available budget is limited and creating a separate role in DCC would add circa £70,000 base cast to the service – instead of the circa £30,000 cost of this proposal. This option therefore does not offer a best value solution and is not considered appropriate.