A MOVE by council chiefs to wrestle back control of Trading Standards will take place in June, it has emerged.

As your Worcester News first revealed in November, Worcestershire County Council is taking the service back in-house amid concerns funding cuts could leave it on the brink of a legal challenge for not being up to scratch.

Before now it was ran by Worcestershire Regulatory Services (WRS), a spin-off organisation funded by councils across the county.

Neil Anderson, the head of communities and environment at County Hall, says in recent weeks talks about the change have progressed well.

He also said despite the takeover it will not severe ties with WRS, with both organisations still sharing the same offices in Wyre Forest House, Kidderminster and able to launch joint investigations if need be.

Speaking during a meeting of the council's corporate and communities overview and scrutiny panel, he said: "Negotiations have been difficult, but we both recognise the aim is to get as good a service as possible.

"All of those old benefits of having that shared service is something we want to retain, for example there will still be joint investigations, we'll still use the same IT and still be based in Wyre Forest House."

Simon Wilkes, the current boss of WRS, also attended the meeting to tell councillors he was happy with the arrangement.

Councillor Lucy Hodgson, cabinet for localism and communities, said: "This was not an easy decision to make, but we realised the budget we had wasn't going to deliver for us so we had a very frank, open, honest discussion.

"It's accepting that we can look back on things and change them that allowed this to happen, and I hope we'll get a good service from what we've got."

Councillor Paul Tuthill, who sits on the committee, backed the decision by saying he'd seen "businesses make decisions and continue with them after it's proved to be wrong".

The decision, which was endorsed by the Conservative cabinet in November, came after worry that 11 full-time equivalent staff faced being reduced to around seven-and-a-half due to funding cuts.

The support for Trading Standards from the county council was due to fall by £360,000 next year, which resulted in WRS saying it would need to shed staff under that arrangement.

By bringing it back in-house the overheads can be swallowed up at County Hall, meaning the jobs are safe.

As well as trading standards, where the workers examine rogue traders and dodgy consumer goods, animal welfare services are also going back in-house.

Last year a council report said the risks of keeping it with WRS included "reputational" damage or even a Judicial Review for having a service which fails to meet its legal duties.