Agenda item

Annex 2 to follow

Ingrid Brown, Head of Legal and Democracy & Monitoring Officer introduced the report and made the following points:

·  The report looked at the work of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel, Standards Committee and sub committees, Governance & Audit Committee and Internal Audit;

·  Internal Audit concerns for the period April 2023 and March 2024, regarding street cleansing, GDPR, Health & Safety and Ground Maintenance were generally fully resolved and in some cases, there were plans to resolve them and there now was an action plan to address any outstanding issues. The annual internal audit report confirms the effectiveness of the internal processes in place;

·  The external auditors observed that the Council‘s proper arrangement to secure the Council’s economy efficiency and effectiveness in its use of resources and therefore anticipated issuing an unqualified audit report in its value for money conclusion. This was therefore a positive report;

·  The Overview and Scrutiny Panel produces an annual report, which was invaluable as it provides evidence of the scrutiny function activities and the role it plays in the Council’s governance and making their recommendations to Cabinet through their work. The Panel had made seven recommendations to Cabinet and four of these were implemented;

·  The Panel also played a vital role in calling-in executive decisions where it felt that such decisions were not made in accordance with the decision-making principles set out in Article 13 of the Council constitution. There were no valid call-ins in the period under review. This was a good sign of how the Council was managing its decision making process;

·  The Governance & Audit Committee met four times in the year under review and considered risk reports as part of their work. Carefully thought out mitigations for each risk were identified. The Committee continued to offer independent and robust challenge and scrutiny to the Council’s financial management and risk management processes and performance as per their remit;

·  With regards to the Standards Committee work, twenty three complaints were dealt with. Four of those were referred to independent investigators, three were still outstanding but coming close to resolution and one had not been upheld;

·  In terms of good governance these were considered to be too many complaints;

·  The Constitutional review Committee continued to play its part in ensuring that the constitution remained fit for purpose. One of the key parts of the constitution they reviewed and recommended to council was the councillor officer protocol. This was one of the recommendations of the IMO;

·  The councillor/officer had now been implemented;

·  Democratic Services provided a comprehensive training programme for councillors. There had been discussions for more online training;

·  Ombudsman complaints had declined and there were no complaints against the Council during the period under review;

·  The Independent Monitoring Officer’s (IMO) recommendations had largely been implemented;

·  A new project management framework had been implemented for managing Council projects. A new project app had been adopted by the Council and an officer project board had been asset up as well;;

·  Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act: Senior officers had not been using these powers. However training had since been provided to officers;

·  Equalities: A cabinet advisory group had been set up and equalities objectives had been drafted, but work was ongoing to finalise these objectives;

·  Equalities impact assessments were now being carried out in the council’s decision making process;

·  A corporate governance board had been set up to ensure a governance framework was in place;

·  Legal Literacy: High level of literacy was required among council officers. Training was therefore provided to officers in April 2024 in decision-making and report writing. These training sessions were well attended by officers. Further training would be arranged for the new Procurement Act that was due to be implemented in February 2025. there was a very good working relationship between the Legal and Procurement teams to facilitate this training;

·  There was now a corporate action plan for all outstanding issues and an update will be reported to the April 2025 meeting.

Members made comments and asked questions as follows:

·  It was clear that some of the frustrations expressed by members had been taken on board;

·  This approach would improve the working relationship between councillors and officers in order to work more effectively;

·  What was this Procurement Act about?

Matt Sanham said that the new Procurement Act would change how councils and public bodies contract out work and procurement services.

Councillor Donaldson proposed, Councillor Davis seconded and members agreed that the following recommendation be forwarded to the next quorate meeting of the Governance & Audit Committee for confirmation:

1.  To note the content of the Annual Governance Statement attached to the committee report at Annex 1;

2.  To approve the Annual Governance Statement attached to the committee report at Annex 1;

3.  To note the action plan annexed to the committee report at Annex 2.