5.3 Local authorities have a broad power to arrange for the joint discharge of any of their functions, or to arrange for the discharge of their functions by another local authority.16
5.4 The joint discharge of functions involves collective decision-making on behalf of all the participating authorities, through a Joint Committee and/or a parallel joint officer decision-making body. But such arrangements for collective decision-making do not create a separate legal entity, and accordingly a lead authority is required to undertake such functions as land ownership or employment of staff on behalf of all the participating authorities, and service delivery will be undertaken through the creation of a direct service unit within a lead authority, or by the use of a contractor.
5.5 In contrast to a situation where the joint discharge of functions is undertaken through a joint committee simply relying on a lead authority to own land, enter contracts etc, in other situations the participating authorities may be content for the lead authority to take on a much wider role, taking operational decisions as well as delivering services on behalf of the other authorities. It is that wider lead authority model which is described in the next two paragraphs and which is often referred to as an "agency" arrangement, with the lead authority acting as the "agent authority".
5.6 Where one authority takes on such an agent authority role, it will need to make arrangements whereby its costs are allocated between the client authorities and under which they each meet their share of the costs of providing the service. The client authorities will wish to ensure that the agent authority is liable if the service is not provided satisfactorily. The process of setting up such arrangements will involve the transfer of staff and property from the client authorities to the agent authority and the participating authorities will wish to make arrangements for the eventual termination of such agency arrangements, the return of appropriate employees and equipment, and intellectual property. As the potential liabilities can be considerable, depending on the nature of the services, it is strongly recommended that a binding legal agreement is entered into between the client authorities and the agent authority.
5.7 In the specific area of waste, such full agency arrangements are very rare for major projects or for major service delivery where implementation will require substantial policy decisions to be taken and authorities may be reluctant to pass responsibility over for such service issues. However, such arrangements are more common on the boundary between waste collection and disposal functions, for example where it may be advantageous for the Waste Collection Authorities to get the Waste Disposal Authority to provide and manage a number of Household Waste Recycling Facilities across their areas to an agreed specification and the Waste Disposal Authority can procure the economic provision and operation of such facilities at the same time securing the co-ordination of the waste collection and disposal functions.
5.8 These type of agency arrangements may also be appropriate for the procurement of a shared contract, where the client authorities can define at the start of the procurement what features would be acceptable or unacceptable in the final shared contract, and can limit the delegation of powers to the agent authority such that the agent authority may only procure a contract which is within such parameters.
5.9 Whilst agency arrangements may include consultative provisions, it is a feature of such arrangements that the client authorities will not be involved in the decision-making process once the agency powers have been transferred. Because this means a significant loss of influence and control on the part of the client authorities, this type of agency arrangements are, as stated above, relatively rare.
5.10 WIDP have prepared a pro-forma IAA (lead authority model) which provides a basis for authorities to develop their own project specific SLAs.
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16 Local Government Act 1972 s.101 for non-executive functions, as applied by the Local Government Act 2000 s.19 and the Local Authorities (Arrangements or the Discharge of Functions (England) Regulations 2000 SI 2000 No. 2851 as amended for executive functions.