Agenda item

·         Health Protection – Julia Burrows (Director of Public Health)

·         Organisation Resilience – Shokat Lal (Executive Director Core Services)

·         Partnership and Collaboration – Shokat Lal (Executive Director Core Services)

The Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance submitted a report reminding Members that at the meeting in March 2021 it had been agreed that the Committee have a regular opportunity for a ‘deep dive’ of some of the strategic risks with the appropriate Executive Director in attendance to update and assure the Committee on the management of their risks.

Members were further reminded that the Strategic Risk Register contained 14 risks of which 3 had been classified as high (red rating), 9 risks had been classified as medium (amber) and 2 had been classified as low (green).

All strategic risks had a number of actions identified to minimise/mitigate the risks and all actions had review/completion dates, status updates, progress RAG ratings and identified owners.

The Director of Public Health and the Executive Director Core Services attended the meeting to provide the Committee with a review of three strategic risks namely:

·         Health Protection Emergency

·         Organisational Resilience; and

·         Partnership and Collaboration Governance.

The Director of Public Health and Executive Director gave details of the background to these risks and to why they were included within the Strategic Risk Register.  They both gave a brief resume of the risk factors that underpinned the Strategic Risks and detailed the actions taken to track and manage risks making particular reference to the documents, plans and arrangements in place to support each service in managing those risks.

The actions associated with the three risks were included in Appendix 1 to the report and Appendix 2 provided a high-level summary of all other strategic risks which included the high-level risk description, risks impact status and response ratings.

In relation to the Health Protection Emergency, the Director of Public Health made particular reference to:

·         The review and testing of all Health Protection Plans all of which reflected health protection issues

·         The need to ensure that all Plans reflected necessary multi-disciplinary arrangements to deal with health protection emergency and to the way these issues were communicated and tested.  It was noted that in October a new Health Protection Plan had been issued

·         The way in which proportionate debriefing and evaluation was undertaken, the way in which ‘lessons learned’ from both exercises and incidents and progress was tracked against actions identified.  Arising out of this reference was made to the liaison with and work of the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Health Resilience Partnership, the South Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum and other partners and agencies

·         The work of the Health Protection Board

In response to specific questioning, further information was provided about the Health Protection Board which reported to the Health and Well Being Board.  Information was also provided about Adult Social Care funding which was still an area for concern.

The Executive Director Core Services then made reference to the following matters in relation to Organisational Resilience and Partnership and Collaboration Governance:

·         Organisational Resilience – the need to ensure that the Council had robust mechanisms in place to deal with external issues such as Brexit, Cyber Security, Terrorism or any other impact requiring a Business Continuity Response:

o   Information was provided about the plans in place for all services and functions and how these were reviewed and tested.  A report was due to be submitted to SMT in December to increase the robustness and to refresh the Corporate Resilience Plan

o   There was a need to maintain adequate governance controls in respect of cyber security and a review was due to be completed in February 2022 but there were real and positive assurance arrangements in place in relation to IT services and systems

o   Plans were being developed for specific capabilities or risks and specific details of these areas was outlined

o   The work of the South Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum, of which Barnsley was the chair, was referred to.  The Council was working with the Forum on developing training and exercising multi-agency arrangements

o   All services within the Directorate had business continuity plans in place and these were currently being refreshed.  Particular reference was made in this respect to Workforce resilience particularly in relation to the strains and stresses associated with working through the Covid pandemic

·         Partnership and Collaboration Governance – many services were now delivered through partnerships or collaboration/devolution arrangements and these must be robust, well governed, flexible and responsive to ensure that objectives were met.  Plans included:

o   the development of a corporate framework and guidance to support partnership and collaborative working

o   assurance regarding the arrangements in place for each partnership/collaboration in relation to, amongst other things, the make-up of boards and their governance arrangements etc.

o   Financial monitoring arrangements

o   The need to ensure appropriate links with the Annual Governance Review process

RESOLVED:

(i)            that the Risk Register and Strategic Concerns update be noted; and

(ii)           that Julia Burrows (Director of Public Health) and Shokat Lal (Executive Director Core Services) be thanked to attending the meeting and for answering Members questions.