Agenda item

Report of the Chief Executive

For discussion

In a change to the order of the published agenda the committee agreed to take item 7, Draft Annual Governance Statement 2019/20 as the next item.

Shail Shah, Head of Audit and Risk introduced the Draft Annual Governance Statement for 2019/20 to the Committee. He advised them that the draft version had been published alongside the Draft Statement of Accounts for 2019/20 towards the end of August 2020. The following information was highlighted:

(a)  The draft document will very likely require changes as more information is received and will come back to this Committee in its final form along with the final Statement of Accounts in due course. The draft Statement is still subject to External Audit as are the draft Accounts;

(b)  Some alterations to the report and the structure have been made taking into account comments previously made by this Committee, timeline columns have been added to the action plan, for example;

(c)  The report outlines the significant issues faced by the Council, these include the Report in the Public Interest, financial implications of the Covid 19 pandemic, RHE, the Capital programme, financial resilience, OFSTED inspection, protecting people from Covid, energy and waste infrastructure and the Broadmarsh project; 

(d)  Comments or suggestions made by the Committee at this time can be incorporated into the final Annual Governance Statement. Officers have provided updated information that has fed into this Statement too;

Committee members asked a number of questions and the following information was highlighted as a result of discussion:

(e)  The action plan indicates end dates of March 2022 for the Report in the Public Interest. Progress reports may be beneficial on the individual elements of the action plan. This Committee will be tracking the progress of implementation of the Action plans. It will become a standing item at Audit Committee and the Programme Manager will report at each meeting in order to assure that Committee that the outcomes are not only progressing in line with the recommendations but that actions are leading to the right outcomes;

(f)  Clear acknowledgement of ambition to have phase reviews on the Capital Programme element is needed. Strong points were made in the previous item around the culture of the phase reviews and the action plan should be more specific. This can further be considered by one of the proposed working groups;

(g)  Some of the items on the action plan are referred to as “continuing to”, or with  “ongoing” timelines, these are either actions that are taking place as normal business, or should be updated on the action plan with additional information. The timelines and actions within the plan are not only for this Committee to act on but also for other Council committees and Council structures. It is necessary for this Committee to receive the updates at appropriate times;

(h)  A statement is needed clarifying what is meant by the completion of the strategic review into Robin Hood Energy as opposed to the completion of the company business and whether the October 2020 end date is appropriate. Clarification will be sought and the final statement updated;

(i)  It is important to keep on top of all of the risks facing the City Council. One of these is the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic and how it will specifically impact Nottingham City Council’s budget. One area of concern is Public Transport, which has been kept open but used far less. There are financial implications to this and more information is needed in the final statement on this area. Nottingham City Council has been working with both the Tram and the Bus companies. The government has provided assistance throughout the crisis, however it is unclear when this support will come to an end and how the future “new normal” will look for these companies. The Nottingham Ice Centre and Royal Centre were also mentioned as being significantly affected. Work to mitigate and understand these risks is underway;

(j)  The Children’s Improvement programme and the financial implications of  improving Children’s Services is also a risk. Extensive modelling work is being undertaken to understand the impact of external factors and of Covid. Although the children in care numbers have increased slightly, the unit cost of provision has increased substantially and a programme of work has commenced to mitigate that additional financial strain;

(k)  The Overview and Scrutiny Committee are looking at the impact of Covid 19 on BAME communities, and disabled colleagues and citizens and those with protected characteristic in light of the Local Outbreak Control Plan;

(l)  There were suggestions from the Committee on presentation of risk information that can be taken away and used to update the statement. All action points in the action plan should reference the outlined major risks;

The Chair and the Head of Audit and Risk will meet outside the Committee to ensure that there is an appropriate reporting pathway in place to pull together updates from the Governance Statement Action Plan, Work Programme and the Public Interest Report Action plan and that the information is fed back to the Committee.

Councillor Michael Edwards proposed an additional recommendation around the need for a coversheet detailing observations made and whether the AGS had been updates as a result of that observation. This proposal was seconded by Councillor Andrew Rule and was carried by the committee.

Resolved to:

(1)  Require a coversheet for the next edition of the Annual Governance Statement presented to the Audit Committee that acknowledges every observation and suggestion made at the September Audit Committee and reports whether the Annual Governance Statement has been changed as a result of each observation; and

(2)  Note the Draft Annual Governance Statement 2019/20 set out in Appendix 1 of the published report.