Purpose

In order to increase its project delivery capacity, the Cabinet approved funding to support a new Project Delivery Unit for two years (26 July 2024). Its primary goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of project delivery, ensuring that projects are completed on time and within budget.
In April 2025 an existing postholder served notice due to recruitment elsewhere within the Council. The Unit generally, and this post specifically, is focused on the delivery of the LUF/CRP and Community Regeneration Partnership funding programmes.
With the fixed-term nature of the Unit, recruitment requires fixed term recruitment, and interim. Public Practice are a specialist social enterprise with the dedicated function to facilitate the availability of suitable specific skills for local authorities.

Decision

To enter into a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to the value of £3,000, to commission ‘Public Practice’ to initiate a recruitment process for a practitioner to undertake a placement with Tendring District Council, in order to fill the below existing post within the Project Delivery Unit, due to the current postholder relocating within the authority.
The post details are:
Grade 10 Project Manager
Fixed term: expiring in November 2026 in line with the period defined for the Project Delivery Unit funding by Cabinet in July 2024
To fund the £3,000 from the Project Delivery Unit budget. The existing post already has budget allocated within the Project Delivery Unit budget, as approved by Cabinet on 26 July 2024 and is included within the formal restructure of the Place

Alternative options considered

Option 1 - Recruit role as described
Option 2 - Do not recruit to the role
This would impact on the Project Delivery Unit’s capacity and ability to deliver against the funding programmes allocated to the team which would impact on the Unit’s ability to deliver on the mandate set by Cabinet.
Option 3 -Do not recruit via Public Practice
This is an option; however this is a tried and tested method that we have found successful to date. A key part of this is the knowledge transfer that is part of the contract which will support the organisation in the longer time. The Public Practice model has also been updated since the Council’s last experience, namely that candidates are now provided year round (as opposed to twice a year as previous); the SLA fee has reduced by half; and multiple candidates will be provided for interview, allowing the Council to select the best match of skills and experience.