All six North Wales councils have pledged to continue working together to provide better value for money services for residents across the region.
At a recent conference held in Llandudno and attended by representatives from the six authorities, delegates were updated on a number of collaboration projects going on.
A North Wales Regional Leadership Board has been set up for some time to push forward the collaboration programme and this Board is seen as being at the forefront of collaboration.
The councils are already looking at collaboration in a number of key areas:
- A shared school improvement service
- Regional Social Care commissioning hub for high cost, low volume placements
- New way of managing transport services
- Regional emergency planning service
- Regional procurement service
Councillor Hugh Evans, Chairman of the North Wales Regional Partnership Board and Leader of Denbighshire, said: “Collaboration is not new for North Wales – there are many projects on-going or in the pipeline and I firmly believe we are well placed to meet the collaboration challenge.
“The beginning of the journey was the signing of a statement of collaboration between all six North Wales authorities.
“We are entering into a new era of delivering services – there is ministerial pressure on councils to work together, the financial situation is not going to improve and our residents want and need quality services.
“There is clear direction from the Minister that we must work together to deliver services, and in North Wales that is already happening.
“Through collaboration I believe we can improve services. Our councils are small and to continue providing high level services we need to look at providing some of them on a regional basis.”
“We need to be the drivers of collaboration, not because of political pressure but because we want to do it. We should aim to find solutions, not create barriers and we need to work together to make things happen.
