Agenda item

Report of Corporate Director for Communities, Environment and Resident Services

Councillor Jenkins, Executive Member for Communities, Waste and Equalities, presented the report, and stated the following:

a)  there are legacy site security requirements in place, which are there for a reason (to protect assets, employees, customers and, in some circumstances, for insurance requirements);

b)  these sites are primarily covered by Council employees. The posts were offered up as a saving, with a proposal to utilise 3^rd party companies rather than inhouse, thereby saving on 33% night enhancement, holiday or sick pay, and National Insurance contributions etc, but this was rejected. What was agreed was to not replace leavers and utilise 3^rd party suppliers to cover holidays, sickness and nights;

c)  there are currently only enough staff to cover 3,500 hours per month, and the current requirement is around 8,000 hours per month, with a split of 3,500 regular hours to cover as a requirement to the Council and 4,500 hours considered as adhoc. Adhoc being sites like the Guildhall or Broadmarsh Intu building, which will eventually be resold or repurposed but legally requires security to prevent harm and protect assets;

d)  the majority of the adhoc requests come via Corporate Landlord and Car Parking, who will have their own spend approval and any costs associated with that work is recharged back to Security, so in essence no cost to the department;

e)  we only cover where asked, and some of the estate is difficult to manage, especially the Guildhall and the old Broadmarsh shopping centre, which still has working shops who legally have access via the service deck and also fire escape routes;

f)  we regularly review requirements and consider other options with colleagues and, wherever possible, we have come up with options which are cheaper, such as installed reactive CCTV, alarms systems and electronic solutions to allow access, however, it is not always possible to keep a site safe without on-site Security;

g)  to highlight the issue, since the original spend approval was given, we have been asked to increase our requirement on a particular site (due to anti-social behaviour, theft and vandalism) and this has taken the original request for £950k to an estimated £1.3m.

Resolved to approve

(1)  entering into a call-off contract for the provision of security staff under the terms of the City Council Corporate Security Services Framework;

(2)   a spend of up to £1.3m due to increase in service demand.

Reasons for recommendations

a)  We are seeking to procure Security Services on behalf of NCC Departments who have requested this service from ourselves having sought spending approval to do so. The call off contract enables us to respond to fluctuating demand in a timely way, which would be impossible to achieve utilising current headcount.

Other options considered

b)  Removing security requirements – this would impact income generation, affecting car parking and events, with increased risk to staff, citizens, assets and of anti-social behaviour.

c)  Recruit more in house security employees – this would increase costs, still may not meet the demand, or mean having more staff than work. This would also leave gaps to cover holiday and sickness as sites still require guarding.