Issue - meetings

RECOMMENDED BY THE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE & AUDIT COMMITTEE

That the committee’s annual report on the Council’s governance arrangements, including the 2015-16 Annual Governance Statement, be noted.

Mrs Tull (Chairman of the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee), seconded by Mr Barrett (Vice-Chairman of the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee), moved these recommendations to the Council.

Mrs Tull introduced the report. The Council was responsible for ensuring that its business was conducted in accordance with the law and proper standards and that public money was safeguarded and properly accounted for and used economically, efficiently and effectively. To this end members and senior officers were responsible for ensuring that proper arrangements existed for the governance of the Council’s affairs and stewardship of its resources.

The Corporate Governance & Audit Committee considers the Council’s Strategic and Organisational risk registers to ensure the adequacy of the Council’s actions to control and manage risks. During 2015-16 the six highest risks identified in the Corporate Risk Register were: financial resilience, skills/capability/capacity, business continuity, cyber-attack across entire estate, non-achievement of recycling target of 50% by 2020 and devolution of public services.

The financial strategy and plan 2016-17, approved by Council in December 2015, anticipated funding reductions over the next five-years. Through this medium term modelling the Council has been able to plan ahead and implement sensible and considered efficiencies to avoid making severe service cuts and thus far it has enabled the Council to set balanced budgets. 

The Annual Governance Statement had been prepared in accordance with the CIPFA/SOLACE guidance on ‘Delivering Good Governance in Local Government’ and sets out the six fundamental principles of good governance. New or emerging risks had been identified in the statement as health and safety, contract management, failure of partners to deliver, staff resources to deliver projects, financial resources to deliver projects, trip dip recession and impact on income streams, termination of leisure contract either by the Council or the contractor and community tensions. These would be subject to further on-going review.

RESOLVED

That thecommittee’s annualreport onthe Council’sgovernance arrangements, includingthe 2015-16Annual GovernanceStatement, benoted.

The committee is required to report to Council each year on the effectiveness of the Council’s governance arrangements. The committee is therefore requested to consider this annual report and to recommend it to Council for approval.

The committee considered the report circulated with the agenda (copy attached to the official minutes).

Mr James presented the report. The committee made comments, including the following:

·          Queried the consistency of recording mitigation against risks – These bullet points would be expanded to include the mitigation.

·          Queried business continuity resilience in terms of whether the Resilience Direct web site had its own business continuity plans. – Mrs Ryan undertook to provide a written response to this question.

·          Queried the number and type of cyber-attacks being experienced by the Council – Our security is constantly being reviewed with ransomware, phishing and viruses being experienced on a daily basis. The Strategic Risk Register would be considered by this committee at its next meeting in November and this would include an update on the current situation including statistical data to give some context  of the attacks experienced.

·          Queried the non-achievement of the recycling targets – The Waste Minimisation Panel was working on an action plan. We are at 39.1% at present but not likely to be fined as some EU countries were achieving much lower results. Chichester Contract Services had started to push the green waste service to help meet the target. Last year we received 10% recycling credits (redistributed from WSCC) and this would increase to 20% by 2018.

·          Queried the staff ratio under the effectiveness of the Internal Audit section – This would be amended to the number of FTEs who were employed during the year in subsequent reports.

RESOLVED

That, subject to the suggested amendments being incorporated, the committee’s annual report on the Council’s governance arrangements, including the 2015-16 Annual Governance Statement at Appendix 1, be agreed.

RECOMMENDED TO COUNCIL

That the Corporate Governance & Audit Committee’s annual report on the Council’s governance arrangements, including the 2015-16 Annual Governance Statement, be noted.