CRAVEN Council's revenues and benefits service is set to continue its joint working partnership with Bradford Metropolitan Council.

The arrangement, which has been in place since 2015, following the resignation of Craven's revenues, benefits and customer services manager, now needed to be firmed up, heard councillors at last week's Policy meeting.

Council leader, Cllr Richard Foster, said the arrangement worked well with Craven being able to access the much greater facilities of the metropolitan district council.

The meeting was also told that because of it being one of the first districts to trial the new Universal Credit, Craven officers were able to share what they had learned with the Department of Work and Pensions.

Following the resignation of the service manager, the council looked at looking at securing a strategic partner to deliver the service. A temporary arrangement was made with Bradford in the meantime while one potential partner was considered and rejected.

Since then, Bradford has provided the management for the service, plus back-up in terms of resilience and expertise, while Craven officers have continued to provide the service itself.

The council's chief executive, Paul Shevlin, and chief financial officer, Nicola Chick, in consultation with Cllr Patrick Mulligan, member in charge of financial resilience, will now work on a mutually acceptable shared service arrangement with Bradford.