New joint-council legal venture announced

Four councils in the south east of England are planning on joining their legal service teams together in the hope that it will save them over £1million in three years.

Surrey County Council, Brighton & Hove City Council, East Sussex County Council and West Sussex County Council will join forces to create Orbis Public Law, which will begin next month.

According to reports published by East Sussex County Council in January, there will be an estimated 230 members of staff in the combined workforce, of whom over 130 will be solicitors.

As such, the councils will develop the model for an jointly-owned alternative business structure, in accordance with the same model that Harrow and Barnet Councils used to create HB Public Law as an ABS.

Councillor David Elkin, of East Sussex County Council, told the Law Gazette that the new single service would “allow us to tap into the wider pool of staff members with specialist expertise that comes from an expanded team.”

He added that: “By creating what is believed to be one of the biggest legal operations in local government, we can achieve greater resilience, reduce cost and deliver savings through economies of scale, avoidance of duplication and income generation.”

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