Agenda item

The Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance will submit a report providing and update on the development of a new approach to risk management.

The Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance submitted a report providing an update on the development of a new approach to risk management.

The concept for the new approach was centred around the creation of a controls and governance assurance framework.  This would create various governance domains which would be used as a basis for capturing the high-level controls expected to be in place and consistently complied with.  These were outlined within Appendix1 to the report.

The new approach would also identify strategic, operational and project concerns, issues and areas of focus with the aim or ensuring that the ‘risks’ of the moment were captured and managed.  This was quite a departure from the traditional risk approach and the reasons for this were outlined.  The new approach also aimed to ensure that senior management had focus on the underlying organisations infrastructure.

Work had commenced in January 2020 following the appointment of the new Corporate Governance and Assurance Manager and the report went on to outline the action taken to date which included, amongst other things, the development of a supporting system to facilitate this new approach.

It was acknowledged that the change in culture required would take time to be fully embedded and further work in creating the governance domains would commence within the next few weeks.  At this stage and particularly in the context of the Covid 19 pandemic it was not practical to set a specific timescale.  This was, however, a priority that had secured the Senior Management Team commitment and further reports on progress would be submitted to future meetings of this Committee.

RESOLVED that the update report and the direction of travel be noted and that further reports be submitted to future meetings of the Committee including the Draft Risk Management Strategy and Policy together with the revised Strategic Register.