The city council is set to welcome three new faces following the successful appointment of three key roles to lead the workforce dedicated to delivering many vital city services for residents.
Over the next few weeks, all three will take up their place as board members of Norwich City Services Ltd – the city council owned company set up to bring around 400 employees back under more direct council control from the current arrangements it has with Norse.
Following a demanding recruitment process, the successful candidates on the new company board will be as follows:
- Chair – Anne Gibson
- Managing director – Hannah Leys
- Non-executive director – Anna Graves
Two city councillors will also join the board after their appointment later this month.
For a number of years the council’s joint venture (JV) arrangements with Norse have delivered a number of services across Norwich, but in September the city council announced the mechanics of how it would be bringing the services back in-house so it could have greater flexibility over their delivery.
These JV arrangements include Norwich Norse Environmental (NNE) and Norwich Norse Building (NNB). The former includes services such as street cleaning, parks and open spaces and the latter covers the likes of building repairs and maintenance services. NNE staff will transfer to the new company in 2021 with NNB staff to follow in 2022.
Alan Waters, leader of Norwich City Council, said: “We’ve thought long and hard about the best solution to bring this workforce back under more direct council control.
“Thankfully, most of that thinking has been done which means we can now properly focus on the important business ahead – providing essential services to our residents and bringing back the services in a phased way, starting from next April, so the transfer is as smooth and seamless as possible.
“Our three new board members – all of who are eminently qualified for their new roles – will be key in driving forward our ambitious agenda to modernise the council and reimagine local services: one of the themes identified in our Covid-19 recovery plan.
“I very much look forward to welcoming them to the council and working with them to use our ‘Norwich 2040 City Vision’ framework to guide us in our ambitions to be a dynamic, fair, connected and successful city.”
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the city council, said: “The services our new wholly owned company will provide are important, resident facing services. I'm delighted we've been able to recruit new colleagues of such high calibre. I look forward to welcoming Anne, Anna and Hannah to the city council and look forward to working with them”.
About the new board members
Anna Graves will be joining the board following her time at Breckland and South Holland District Councils, as joint chief executive. With over 30 years of public sector delivery including in-house; arms-length companies and commercial contracts.
Hannah Leys will be joining the board after 20 years’ experience in leading, shaping and delivering high quality environmental/facilities management services to public and private sector clients – most recently in her current role as operations director for Norwich Norse Environmental.
Anne Gibson will be joining the board as an experienced non-executive chair and brings over 20 years’ experience in senior leadership roles in local government.
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