Agenda item

The Chief Executive, Director of Finance, Assets and Information Services and Director of Legal and Governance will submit a joint report on the Draft Annual Governance Statement 2015/16.

The Chief Executive, Director of Finance, Assets and Information Services submitted a joint report on the Draft Annual Governance Statement 2015/16.

The Statement gave details of:

·         The purpose of the Governance Framework

·         The Governance and Internal Control Framework

·         The process of annually reviewing the effectiveness of the Governance and Internal Control Framework

·         The development and improvement issues arising from the Annual Governance Review to be addressed during 2016/17

The Draft Annual Governance Statement was appended at Appendix1 and the 2016/17 Action Plan, which had been sent out as a supplementary agenda, was detailed as Appendix 2.

The Committee was given a brief resume of the key issues highlighted.

The review of the Authority’s governance, risk and control arrangements in 2015/16 had not identified any fundamental issues and had confirmed the general level of compliance with the Council’s Governance and Internal Control Framework remained good.  The review process had taken into account the action taken against the control issues raised in the 2014/15.  As the nature of some of the issues were of a longer-term nature, these remained in progress and had been carried forward into the 2016/17 list of issues.  These related to:

a)        To further develop and embed a practical framework to assist in the effective governance and control of the Council’s partnerships, contracts and general relationships with external organisations; and

b)        Improving the Council’s Business Continuity Planning arrangements to ensure the Council and its key partners were able to coordinate a proportionate response in the event of a business continuity threat or emergency situation.

The whole process was underpinned by the context within which the Council was currently working, the financial and operational environment and the move to a new and improved organisational model which, in addition to creating new directorates and business unity in 2015 had been undertaken within the context of a challenging budget reduction of £28m.

The report went on to give details of the risk mitigations in relation to the successful delivery and embedding of the Future Council operating model and indicated that the risks to the successful delivery of this programme appeared to be in tolerance.  It was important, however, to acknowledge the uncertainty regarding the need to allow the Council’s new operating model to ‘bed-down’.

It was noted that the Annual Governance Statement was one of the ways in which assurance was provided to residents and other stakeholders (including Partners) that the decision making processes of the Council had integrity.  The process was supported by the provision of assurance information to all Service Directors details of which were outlined.  Those Service Directors were then asked to confirm the receipt of this information, confirm the assurance information and agree to implement any identified recommendations with the published timescales.  The Action Plan then produced captured all the issues raised through the review process and formed the basis for Audit Committee monitoring throughout the year.

The final Statement would be prepared for consideration by this Committee in September prior to the submission to the Council on the 29^th September, 2016.

In the ensuing discussion, and in response to detailed questioning, the following matters were highlighted:

·         The Risk Management Manager briefly ran through the actions contained within the Action Plan and in response to specific questioning referred to a meeting to be held with the Head of Strategic Procurement to discuss a corporate issue relating to non-compliance with Contract Procedure Rules and the overall adequacy of Contract Management Arrangements.  Following that meeting, the Action Plan would be updated to reflect the agreed timescales to address issues identified.

·         Reference was made to the role of this Committee in taking the lead in overseeing the Council’s Risk Management framework arrangements and of receiving report of action taken and progress made.  In this context comments were made particularly in relation to the completion of audit report recommendations by the agreed deadline which was not particularly good.  The Director of Finance, Assets and Information Services confirmed, as previously reported, that steps were in hand to make the necessary changes to address these issues.

RESOLVED that the Draft Annual Governance Statement 2015/16 be noted.