Tri-borough is a project between three councils in west London, England to combine service provision. The councils are Westminster City Council, Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council and the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council. It launched in June 2011 and is due to come to an end in April 2018 [1]
In October 2010, Westminster City Council, Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council, and Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council planned to combining specific areas of service delivery as a response to financial pressures facing local government in England. In February 2011 the chief executives of the three local authorities published a report entitled Bold Ideas for Challenging Times. [2] This set out the plan to share services, combine back office and management costs, and gave a projected saving of £33.4m. The report outlined that in June 2011, the three authorities would, together detail how they would deliver the proposals. [3] The cabinets for each authority then met separately and agreed to implement the proposals to share services. Under the plan the councils would remain legally distinct entities responsible for service specification and delivery. [4]
Since June 2011 each council’s children’s service, adult social care and library service has been combined to create a single service. Each of these services is headed by a single executive director and a shared management team. Councillors from each council retain responsibility for the way the shared service is provided in their local area. [5] Specific areas of corporate services have also been combined across the three councils. This has included creating a joint chief executive for Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea and a single treasury and pensions team. [6] [7] A shared environment and leisure team has also been created across Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea. Currently, environmental services are not a combined service due to contractual constraints for Westminster City Council. [8] In total, tri-borough was reported to have saved £1m by October 2011 [9] and is expected to achieve target savings of £33.4m by the financial year 2014/15. Additional savings of £7m are expected to be made by 2015/16. [10]
The plan is supported by central government. David Cameron MP said: “I think this is a very important point and I hope that councils up and down the country will look at it. Three large councils are coming together and saving £33m because they are sharing back-office services, executive teams and so on. Frankly, if they can do it, as large councils that have big responsibilities, many other councils should be doing it in London and elsewhere. Until we see that happening, I do not think it is realistic to say that it is necessary for councils to cut front-line services” [11]
On 27 March 2017 a statement was published by the three councils that they had reached an agreement to serve notice on the arrangement, citing uncertainty caused by Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council. [12]
Both Westminster City Council and Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council are planning to continue sharing services in a bi-borough arrangement. [1]
The London boroughs are the 32 local authority districts that make up the ceremonial county of Greater London; each is governed by a London borough council. The present London boroughs were all created at the same time as Greater London on 1 April 1965 by the London Government Act 1963 and are a type of local government district. Twelve were designated as Inner London boroughs and twenty as Outer London boroughs. The City of London, the historic centre, is a separate ceremonial county and sui generis local government district that functions quite differently from a London borough. However, the two counties together comprise the administrative area of Greater London as well as the London region of England, all of which is also governed by the Greater London Authority.
Kensington is an affluent district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) is an Inner London borough with royal status. It is the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England; it is one of the most densely populated administrative regions in the United Kingdom. It includes affluent areas such as Notting Hill, Kensington, South Kensington, Chelsea, and Knightsbridge.
The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham is a London borough in West London and which also forms part of Inner London. The borough was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former Metropolitan Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham. The borough borders Brent to the north, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the east, Wandsworth to the south, Richmond upon Thames to the south west, and Hounslow and Ealing to the west.
Kensington (Olympia) is a combined rail and tube station in Kensington, London. Services are provided by London Overground, who manage the station, along with Southern and London Underground. It is in Travelcard Zone 2. On the Underground it is the terminus of a short District line branch from Earl's Court, originally built as part of the Middle Circle. On the main-line railway it is on the West London Line from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction, by which trains bypass central London. The station's name is drawn from its location in Kensington and the adjacent Olympia exhibition centre.
Gregory William Hands is a British Conservative Party politician serving as Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth since 2021 and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelsea and Fulham, previously Hammersmith and Fulham, since 2005. Hands was a Minister of State for Trade Policy, from February 2020 to September 2021.
The London Government Act 1963 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which created Greater London and a new local government structure within it. The Act significantly reduced the number of local government districts in the area, resulting in local authorities responsible for larger areas and populations. The upper tier of local government was reformed to cover the whole of the Greater London area and with a more strategic role; and the split of functions between upper and lower tiers was recast. The Act classified the boroughs into inner and outer London groups. The City of London and its corporation were essentially unreformed by the legislation. Subsequent amendments to the Act have significantly amended the upper tier arrangements, with the Greater London Council abolished in 1986, and the Greater London Authority introduced in 2000. As of 2016, the London boroughs are more or less identical to those created in 1965, although with some enhanced powers over services such as waste management and education.
Chelsea and Fulham is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 creation. It is currently represented by Greg Hands of the Conservative Party. He was the MP for the former neighbouring constituency of Hammersmith and Fulham from 2005 to 2010 before it was abolished. He is currently a minister in the Department for International Trade.
The Hammersmith and Fulham Parks Constabulary was a small constabulary responsible for policing the parks and open spaces of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. In 2013, it merged with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Parks Police to form the Parks Police Service.
Chelsea was a borough constituency, represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
West Central is a constituency represented on the London Assembly. The seat is currently held by Tony Devenish, a Conservative.
Local government in Greater London takes place in two tiers; an upper tier and a lower tier. The upper tier authority is the Greater London Authority (GLA), controlled by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The lower tier authorities are the 32 borough councils and the City of London Corporation in the City of London.
Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils (GLATUC) is the largest County Association of Trades (Union) Councils in the Uk and covers the Greater London area. As the official Trades Union Congress body for London GLATUC seeks to co-ordinate activity by Trades (Union) Councils across the capital and works with individual unions and other organisations on a range of campaigns and activities. It is part of the national Trades Union Congress.
Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council in London, England, is elected every four years. Since the last boundary changes in 2014, 50 councillors have been elected from 18 wards.
Local government elections took place in London, and some other parts of the United Kingdom on Thursday 6 May 2010. Polling stations were open between 7am and 10pm.
Kensington Central Library is a Grade II* listed building on Hornton Street and Phillimore Walk, Kensington, London. It was built in 1958–60 by the architect E. Vincent Harris on the site of The Abbey, a Gothic house which had been constructed for a Mr Abbot in 1880 and destroyed by bombing in 1944. It was opened by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 13 July 1960. The building was designed in a traditional, English, renaissance-style. There were demonstrations against the project by those who advocated for the building to be in a modern style.
There were local government elections in London on Thursday 22 May 2014. All councillor seats on the 32 London borough councils were up for election. The electorates of Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets also elected their executive mayors, who operate in place of council leaders in those boroughs. Ward changes took place in Hackney, Kensington and Chelsea, and Tower Hamlets, which reduced the total number of councillors by 10 to 1,851. Both the mayoral and councillor elections are four-yearly.
The Parks Police Service was a small constabulary responsible for policing 87 parks and open spaces in the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. The police force was created through the merger of Hammersmith and Fulham Parks Constabulary and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Parks Police in 2013. In 2019, the respective councils of Hammersmith & Fulham and Kengsinton & Chelsea disaggregated their shared some of their services, including the Parks Police. As such, the Parks Police Service ceased to exist and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Parks Police and the Hammersmith and Fulham Parks Constabulary came back into existence.
London Plus Credit Union Limited is a not-for-profit member-owned financial co-operative, based in Fulham and operating in the City of Westminster and west London boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Hounslow. Wandsworth Plus Credit Union is a trading name of London Plus Credit Union working in partnership with Wandsworth Council in south west London.