COUNCILS across Gloucestershire are set to undergo a radical shake-up as they bring most of their services in-house.

Most of Cotswold, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire district councils’ services were transferred to Publica in 2017, by the then-Conservative administrations at the three councils.

This company, which is fully owned by these authorities along with Cheltenham Borough Council, has been delivering public services for the councils since then.

While Cheltenham was a founding member and full shareholder of Publica they only have their ICT services within the company.

However, the aim now is for councils’ to take back direct control of staff in a bid to provide better services and make savings in the long run.

Council chiefs say the Publica partnership has achieved the savings it was initially set up for but councillors are concerned about sovereignty and control as well as its ability to deliver further savings in the future.

This prompted the authorities to act now and a company called Human Engine was appointed to undertake the review of Publica.

This was triggered by a recent peer review of Cotswold District Council undertaken by the Local Government Association.

The move to take more services in-house is being driven by Cotswold and Forest of Dean councils.

All council services apart from customer services, employee services such as procurement and transactional HR along with ICT will be transferred to each authority.

It is likely that the Cotswold and West Oxfordshire councils will share most of their services in future.

This would be a return to a similar arrangement prior to the establishment of Publica.

The authorities anticipate that there will be some upfront “one off” costs associated with bringing staff back in-house but they believe the cost can be met from existing reserves.

And the first services are expected to be transferred next summer.

Publica management were briefed about the changes on Monday morning by Cotswold District Council leader Joe Harris (LD, St Michael’s) while staff were told in the afternoon.

The proposals will need to be formally ratified by all of the authorities’ cabinets.

In the short term, no jobs are understood to be put at risk by the changes.

Cotswold District Council’s cabinet is due to consider the proposals on November 2.