There is a proposal to update the North West
Emergency Services Network s22A Collaboration Agreement into the
new template developed by APACE in collaboration with the NPCC and
the Association of Police Lawyers.
The parties to the current agreement are Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater
Manchester Police, Lancashire, Merseyside and the Lead Chief
Officer and Policing Body are Cheshire.
The ESN project was set up by the Home Office in 2016 to replace
the existing Airwave radio network. Each NW Force had a small
project team with the Chief Constables from each Force agreeing to
contribute towards a small regional team. A section 22 agreement
was signed and has been in place since 2017.
Ordinarily there would not be an issue with transitioning to the
new form of Agreement. However, recently the Home Office announced
a major delay to the programme (2 to 3 years) and NPCC made a
decision to stand down all regional teams. This is due to happen
for the NW at the end of March 2023. In November 2022, the Chief
Constable of Cheshire advised in a letter that they had recently
taken the pragmatic decision to wind down the regional ESN team
given the lack of progress nationally on the project.
One of the general principles of the new form Agreement is that
each Party is to share fairly the benefits, risks and liabilities
of the collaboration. This will involve each party making a
financial contribution to cover its share of any part of the budget
that is not covered by external funding. Greater Manchester general
contribution ratio is 41.98%.
A Force may withdraw from the collaboration by giving twelve
months’ notice or the agreement may be terminated at any time
by the unanimous agreement of the parties.
Given the national position, and the wish to disband the current
arrangements, Cheshire would be amenable to reducing the required
notice period and ending the Collaboration by mutual consent.
However, it should be noted that the cost sharing provisions
contained within the new iteration of the S22 agreement are
different. In the new form, the cost of any redundancies of staff
who are members of the Centrally Funded Team are a liability of the
NORTH WEST EMERGENCY SERVICES NETWORK and the parties agree to
proportionately reimburse the cost of any redundancy in accordance
with the Apportionment Ratio. The potential implications of this
are set out in the Financial Comments section of this
decision.
Reasons why the updates decision should be signed:
S22A Collaborations should be on the most up to date template, as
part of good governance. HMICFRS have a particular interest in
collaborations. GMCA were not named on the previous S22a (it
referred instead to PCC for GM) and the new form is updated for
GDPR.
GMP/GMCA are still a party to the collaboration even though we
haven’t signed the updated version, but every other regional
CC and Policing body has. We will need to work together to agree
the position as to how the Agreement will come to an end by way of
mutual consent in March 2023.
If the parties cannot reach agreement, then mutual termination will
not be possible and will trigger each party serving a 12 months
notice to exit and continuing to pay the costs of and incidental to
that.
This would be a complex and difficult scenario to navigate through.
GMP has some favourable information surrounding the funding below,
which suggests that a pragmatic way forward should be
adopted.
Whilst this Agreement will be terminated in March 2023 there are of
course many other agreements that remain in existence so there is a
need to maintain relations in that regard.
Decision type: Non-key
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Notice of proposed decision first published: 13/01/2023
Decision due: 22 Dec 2022 by Director for Police, Crime, Criminal Justice and Fire, GM Deputy Mayor, Treasurer GMCA
Contact: Lisa Lees Email: lisa.lees@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk.