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(1) To delete the Head of Case Management post
at Guildford Borough Council.
(2) To create a new permanent Joint Head of Service Improvement
post at Waverley Borough Council reporting to the Joint Assistant
Director of Transformation.
(3) To delegate authority to the Joint Assistant Director
Transformation to make any changes to the role, following the
outcome of consultation with staff and the Union;
(4) To agree that the post of Joint Head of Service Improvement
will be a shared post between Guildford Borough Council and
Waverley Borough Council and will be governed by the existing
principles of the Inter-Authority Agreement.
(5) To fund the post 50:50 between Waverley and Guildford Borough
Council from within existing budgets.

Reasons for the decision

On 1 July 2025 Waverley Borough
Council’s Executive resolved to delegate authority to the
Chief Executive, in consultation with the Leader of the Council, to
approve the creation of new joint posts for Guildford Borough
Council and Waverley Borough Council, in accordance with all Human
Resources policies and within approved budget. The same resolution
was made by Guildford Borough Council’s Executive on 19 June
2025.

Both Councils are committed to ambitious programmes of
collaboration and improvement, alongside also preparing for local
government re-organisation.

Within each of these programmes of work there is a strong business
need to resource key areas of service improvement so as to make
sure they deliver on time and to cost the expected benefits.

Corporate resources have recently been strengthened to improve both
Councils' capability and capacity to deliver this large programme
of change. However, there remains a clear resourcing gap where
there is no corporate lead on service improvement projects, which
are being delivered as part of our overall portfolio of change. The
new Joint Head of Service Improvement will complement the Head of
Transformation and Chief of Staff role by providing much needed
extra capacity to lead complex areas of service improvement. Areas
of improvement where this capacity is needed include:

• The systems re-design and re-procurement of the planning
case management system across both councils
• The procurement and roll out of new devices for all staff
across both Councils and supporting the IT teams' drive service
improvements
• Supporting the services with Phase 2 of the Guildford
operating model changes
• Other areas of service improvement identified by the
organisation, linked to the councils’ delivery plans, the
collaboration programme and local government re-organisation.

The creation of the post will achieve an overall annual saving of
£25,000 to GBC (subject to any redundancy costs). It will
have a net nil impact on the WBC budget.

Alternative options considered

To not appoint a Joint Head of Service
Improvement.

This has been discounted as it would not create the capacity
required to move forward both Councils’ ambitious
transformation and improvement plans.