There will be no Headquarters for the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, The Impartial Reporter can reveal.

Instead, the 40 Councillors have decided that two service centres will operate from Enniskillen Townhall and the Grange, Omagh.

Members of the Senior Management Team will be based in either Omagh or Enniskillen but will work across both sites.

Council and committee meetings will continue to alternate between Enniskillen and Omagh.

According to UUP Omagh Councillor Chris Smyth: “Most of the Fermanagh Councillors from all parties would have preferred Enniskillen to be the new Headquarters because Fermanagh is the bigger block”. However, he said, the Omagh Councillors are of the opinion: “If we are going to share this Council, we may as well share where we meet.” A leaked confidential report compiled by Fermanagh District Council last November and seen by The Impartial Reporter stated: “Enniskillen should be identified clearly as the seat of the new local authority”. “A split-site local authority service will not meet the needs of all communities,” it added.

At the September Policy and Resources Committee, a report on organisation design was presented to Councillors, recommending that there would be operational centres in both Omagh and Fermanagh, with no major transfer of jobs between the two. The report recognised that this option “will have an impact on cost of service provision and on effective and efficient service delivery options.” The recommendations were approved by “a unanimous cross party decision” at the full Council meeting in October.

Operating from the Townhall and the Grange “simply means that residents will be able to access services such as registration, environmental health, building control and planning at the location which is most convenient for them,” a Council spokeswoman said.

She described the rationale for two service centres as ensuring appropriate access to services for all residents and customers within the entire new district area, with the associated objective of achieving equity.” The aim of Local Government Reform is to create bigger, stronger and more effective councils and to save money. Asked how having two service centres saves money, the spokeswoman replied: “Whilst cost saving is one of the objectives of Local Government Reform, so too is the objective of establishing a stronger, more efficient, more flexible and more accountable local government with increased responsibilities and functions.” Asked how the two service centres will work in practice, the spokeswoman replied: “The provision of two service centres will enable Fermanagh and Omagh District Council to offer residents access to all council services in Enniskillen and in Omagh.The new Fermanagh and Omagh District Council area will be the largest geographically of the 11 new councils serving the needs of a population dispersed across a wide rural area. In designing services to meet the needs of the new district’s population, the Council has agreed that maintaining equitable access to services will be a main driver.

“In order to facilitate this, there will be operational centres in both Omagh and Fermanagh. Work is ongoing to finalise arrangements for service delivery models across all customer facing services taking these principles into account. Final service design options will be agreed by Council in due course.” Investment in IT infrastructure will lessen the need for physical movement between the sites, according to the Council spokeswoman.

Councillor Chris Smith thinks “it’s a good idea because we have two very good facilities.” He adds: “Frankly, if we are to share this Council, we may as well share where we meet. We have a very good facility at the Grange; we just had the Chamber re-done.” He states: “It’s a massive area from Belcoo to Greencastle”, therefore, two service centres “make sense”. According to Councillor Smith, both Enniskillen Townhall and the Grange would be too small on their own to accommodate all the new services coming to the Council.

Asked how this meets the objective of saving money, he says: “We are saving money in other ways in that we have only one Chief Executive and there are fewer Directors (four). It will save money in the long-run.” An independent review of the Council’s organisation design recommends that the current design be reviewed in two years time.

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