About the Councils

Serving a combined population of around 250,000 residents, Chorley Council and South Ribble Borough Council are fast becoming a shining example of the power of collaboration. With a balance of urban and rural areas, both are largely affluent but with pockets of deprivation and they sit within the county of Lancashire, a county full of diverse heritage, beautiful landscapes, and strong connectivity to areas of England, Scotland, and Wales. With major motorway and rail links to Manchester and Preston, including to Liverpool and Manchester Internal Airports, the boroughs of Chorley and South Ribble are an attractive place for people to live, work and visit.

  • Chorley Council has a vision that his shared across the Council. This is to enable strong communities, a resilient economy, excellent services, a greener future and successful people. The council has a clear set of values – to be forward-thinking, have ambitions to do better, treat people with respect, be professional and take pride, all whilst working as one team and one council. The organisation has committed to four key priorities for the future:

    1. Housing where residents can live well

    2. A green and sustainable borough

    3. An enterprising economy with vibrant local centres in urban and rural areas

    4. Healthy, safe and engaged communities

    Chorley Corporate Strategy

    Chorley Council Destination Management Plan

    Chorley: Our Position Statement

  • South Ribble Borough Council’s vision is to be a listening, engaging and responsive Council that makes the best use of its resources to enable every person and community to thrive in a vibrant, green and fair borough. The Council’s values are focused on having integrity, a positive attitude, being a learning organisation, promoting teamwork and excellence in all that they do, and equality and diversity are placed at the heart of these values. The council has determined a set of four key priorities for the future:

    1. To be an exemplary council – delivering high performing services that represent value for money, understanding the community and working with partners to make things better.

    2. To build healthy and happy communities – ensuring residents have positive mental health, people get involved and have a sense of belonging, and that communities access services and support when needed.

    3. To create a fair local economy that works for everyone – increasing access to training and jobs, growing, and supporting sustainable businesses, and investing in improvements to the borough.

    4. To create good homes, green spaces, and healthy places – giving a choice of decent, affordable housing, protecting the local environment, and giving a choice of quality recreational activities.

    South Ribble Borough Corporate Strategy

  • Chorley Council and South Ribble Council share a number of services.

    Why shared services?

    Shared services allows for improved resilience across both Councils and provides numerous benefits to our operations and in turn our service to our residents. It also provides significant cost savings for both Councils.

    Currently we share the following services equating to over 200 staff:

    • Joint senior management team including Chief Executive

    • Finance

    • Corporate governance and legal

    • Communications and visitor economy

    • Transformation and partnerships

    • ICT Services

    • Customer services

    Council sovereignty and decision making

    Both councils still retain their Council, cabinet and committees and make decisions and set policy for their sovereign Council.

    While the back end processes may be shared, the values, strategies, and corporate plans are separate to each council. Our staff are trained to work for both independent Councils simultaneously.

The Councils

As we look towards Local Government Reorganisation across England, where Councils are exploring closer collaboration, shared services, and in some cases moving towards unitary status, Chorley Council and South Ribble Borough Council are already demonstrating what successful transformation looks like.

Our long-standing shared service partnership, which began in 2009, has evolved into a dynamic and forward-thinking arrangement that now sees around half of our workforce operating jointly across both authorities. With the appointment of a joint Chief Executive in 2019, the pace and ambition of our integration have significantly increased, delivering real outcomes for our communities and enhanced resilience for our services.

We’ve recently expanded our senior leadership team by welcoming several new heads of service. Now, we are looking for an experienced and forward-thinking individual to join us this key role, helping to drive forward transformation, ensure legal excellence, and support economic and organisational growth.

Chorley and South Ribble’s shared service model is a proactive, positive step toward a more sustainable and collaborative future in local government. For legal professionals ready to lead through change, influence at scale, and be part of something truly progressive, this is an opportunity not to be missed.

Both Councils push boundaries and punch above their weight, both together and independently. We have strong ambitions to serve the public and to do our best for our respective local communities. Like many other authorities and publicly funded organisations, we are dealing with significant challenges and having to make substantial savings. Despite these pressures, we are making good progress on ambitious projects to improve the boroughs.

 Contact

To find out more about the role please contact Bella Bennett or Clare Connor at our recruitment partner, Tile Hill.