Kent County Council is to create a general counsel role should it be granted an alternative business structure licence for its pioneering quasi-commercial legal services arm. 

The council yesterday approved a draft senior management structure for its Strategic and Corporate Services Directorate, which includes a new GC post should a joint-venture ABS go ahead as planned.

The GC role will include becoming the local authority’s senior lawyer and encompass monitoring officer responsibilities and democratic services. The GC will be the senior information risk owner and, therefore, manage the information resilience and transparency team.

They will also be a substantive member of the council’s corporate management team and corporate board.

The directorate was established as part of an operational framework agreed by the council in December 2013 and implemented in April 2014. A new senior management structure will come into effect from 1 April this year.

The current director of governance and law role will only be ‘deleted’ from the structure if an alternative service delivery model is agreed for legal services. The current post will continue unchanged should the joint-venture ABS not happen.

Geoff Wild, Kent’s director of governance and law, was unable to comment ‘due to the delicate stage at which the procurement process has reached’. Kent was in the middle of a competitive dialogue procurement process, he said, which is expected to conclude by June.