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Newport City Council’s plans to set up a new trading company for property services are “heading towards the finish line”.
The council’s current partnership with the Norse Group is due to end on December 31, bringing to an end an 11-year agreement.
In that time, Newport Norse has managed around 1,500 assets for the city council and provided services from building maintenance and inspections to cleaning and catering.
Norse is wholly owned by Norfolk County Council, with Newport receiving a rebate from the partnership “in excess of £5.6 million” over its 11-year course.
But the city council now plans to go its own way and has set up an arms-length local authority trading company (LATCo), Cyson Cymru, in the hope it will give Newport more control over its property services and open the door to new trade opportunities.
Cllr Dimitri Batrouni, the leader of Newport City Council, said the LATCo model will mean “more control, more commercial, [and be] better for the taxpayer”.
Cyson Cymru is reportedly the first LATCo in Wales, and will take over the council’s property services in the new year.
Speaking before a local authority scrutiny committee, senior council officer Rhys Cornwall talked up the new arrangement as providing “really exciting prospects and opportunities for us as an organisation” including the potential to delve more into commercial operations.
Mr Cornwall described the Newport Norse venture as “a thing of its time”.
“There were a series of these joint ventures set up across the UK, it did what it was [planned to],” he said. “It returned a rebate to the council every year, over and above what it said it was going to do, and that rebate has been ploughed into other services.
“We can’t forget that, that money has come back into Newport for us to invest in services. Would the council have made the same decision now? Probably not, because the world has changed.”
Tracy McKim, another senior officer, said: “Obviously there are things the council wants to change, otherwise we wouldn’t be going through that change.”
Cllr Matthew Pimm sought assurances Newport Norse staff would be supported during the transition to the new model.
“Everybody’s going to carry on being paid,” replied Mr Cornwall. “There won’t be any issues around that. Everybody who wants to be in the new entity is going to be in the new entity, as it currently stands. We’re consulting with staff on the structures at the moment.
He added there would be a pause of planned work in December because it “makes life simpler”, but emergency work will continue during that period.
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