Transcript

Unfortunately, no substitute was available, and apologies from Council Adent, and so is Councillor COWING, and just to know that Councillor Stafford is not present either, so you may well be apologies as well. Thank you, and do we have any declarations of interest? None. Okay, so, oh, sorry, and is everybody happy with the minutes from the last meeting held on the 10th of January 2024? Is that agreed? Okay, and I think for this meeting, what I'm going to do is we're going to move item 7 forwards, so if we can first start with item 7, and I'm going to pass on to a college shooter to present. Thank you, Chair. So this item is to give the Audit Committee an update on compliance regarding our Freedom of Information Requests, subject access requests and complaints. We've provided updates at previous Audit Committees, and we've also been providing a monthly update to members just to keep you informed between meetings. Back in December 2023, the Information Commissioners Office issued a practice recommendation against the Council regarding our Freedom of Information Request compliance. We had experienced extremely poor performance. The low point was that we were responding to 48.7% of requests in time. The ICR requirement is that we reply to 90% in time, and therefore we had a practice recommendation to improve that compliance by May 2024. I'm pleased to share with the Audit Committee that we have made significant improvement over the last few months. We've put a number of interventions in place, and in March, our compliance was at 84%, so slightly short of the target, but we still had the month of April to recover a bit further. The priority has very much been on our Freedom of Information Requests, but we've also had a focus on complaints and subjects' access requests. Our complaints have improved from 35% being replied to in time to 73%, and our statutory complaints are now extremely low in volume, and we only have one outstanding at the time of writing this report. An area that's proven to continue to be a challenge is our subjects' access requests. We have seen an increase in performance to 55%, but there's some challenges around volume and complexity which we're still struggling with and putting additional resources towards. So we're not in the position to be complacent about our performance, our monitoring officer will be writing to the Information Commissioner in the next week, as we need to provide an update by the first of May on a Freedom of Information Requests, and will be maintaining the oversight and discipline that we've had to date to ensure that our compliance continues to improve. The other point I wanted to bring to the attention of the committee is that there is little in the way of an update on the data incident in this report. That is because we are still awaiting a decision from the Information Commissioner's Office on any regulatory action that may be taken or not. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the update, Claire. On the Freedom of Information Requests, I appreciate that one of the actions is that there is a recruitment, there's a vacancy that's being recruited to expand the team. Putting that to one side, is the vacancy the only reason is the sheer volume of requests is coming in, are we above average for local authorities? Yes, so that results will be in place from May, but we do experience, as an authority, a very high number of requests and the Information Commissioner we've had regular conversations with them throughout the improvement period, and they do comment on the number that we have. One of the things that has led to that is the lack of information that we publish on our website, for example, and therefore we've had a concerted effort to make sure that we are publishing more things like structure charts, regularly requested policies, performance information, and that should hopefully bring down a number of requests that we receive. Do you have any further questions? Thank you, Chair. What are we doing, if anything, around the requests? Keeping a log of them so that when similar requests come in, we're not duplicating work. We have any data on how much of these requests or the work that's being done is duplication. I don't have any data on that, but we do absolutely do that, so when we receive a request, it is logged. We also check against the requests that we've already responded to in case we can issue the same response or point that person to the same information we've shared previously. Councillor CASSIDY, thank you, Chair. Moving on to the second part, which is the subject access requests, my understanding is that at the moment that is performed by our cybersecurity person and that there are some or the information security person that there's some money from the budget that's been put aside to recruit a role, how are we getting on with recruiting that? So the subject access requests in Children's Services have actually managed by the Information Governance team, so they will do all the reductions and the processing of that request where there is an IT involvement is that they will help us access records in email systems and maybe in case management systems, so it's just a part of the process for subject access requests. We do have the additional funding, which we've covered in 3.18 in the report. That £100,000 is being split between cybersecurity and the data and information governance teams. We are reinstating an IT analyst role in the cyber security team and for the subject's access requests, we're also looking at whether we employ an additional resource in that team as well, so we're hoping to put resource in two places to support those requests. Yes, okay, that's a fun Councillor. Thank you, Chair. The last question, which is relating to both of them, is there currently any investment or investigation into automation of lots of these requests, because it sounds like we're doing a lot of manual work? Yes, we are investing in that, so with our Freedom of Information requests, we've been doing some data scraping and that's helped inform us where the themes are around what data we should be publishing, so that's been incredibly useful, that hasn't been a manual task, that's all been done automatically. The subject access requests are really difficult because you are manually redacting certain information which we haven't found or we're not aware of any software that can do that for us. We will continue to kind of endeavour to see what can be done on automation, but that's one of the reasons the performance is so difficult to improve in this area because it's such a manual task. We have engaged some two specialist agencies to help us with that, but again, they're providing manual support, there's nothing that's going through a system at present. Any other Councillor Bursen? Thank you. So staff, obviously it's a really good report, really good to see the progress. Staff have helped to get the backlog down, have they been pulled over from elsewhere in the organisation? It's really been a kind of a cross-organisation effort, so we do have a central team in the Our Information Governance team who will kind of coordinate and make sure we are responding in the right way to request, but actually it's the rest of the organisation that's providing all the information, so if we get a Freedom of Information request about pot holes, we will be liaising with the Highways team because they will hold the information, they will help draft the response and then the Information Governance team will help kind of coordinate the response. So I can't say that we're not really pulling resources, we're kind of using what we've got in the centre and also in the wider business. Thank you. I suppose what I was trying to get a handle on is obviously at the moment, we've got a real issue with subjects as a request, let's really sort that out, but there might be other stuff these people were doing, so then in a year's time I was saying, Oh actually this is the other thing, this is now the problem, do you know what I mean? So it's not that situation in your view. No, I would say though, we have been prioritising Freedom of Information requests because we were under regulatory action from the ICO, we have to make sure that we meet that improvement by May and that may mean that we haven't put quite as much resource on complaints for example which are more of an internal policy requirement, so I have to say we have had to prioritise some effort around Freedom of Information requests if anything else. Yes, Councillor Verson, what proportion of how many do we say no to and what kind of reasons are there for that and the second part, are there any that go to the Information and Commissioner for the people that appeal? I don't know how many we say no to, there is a very clear exception criteria set out in the data protection act around Freedom of Information requests, so I might actually ask, I'm wondering if she's able to give some examples, but there's quite clear criteria of what you can and can't accept the Freedom of Information request, I don't know how many we decline. If that could go on the next book, so I'd be quite interested in that, I suppose, because I think that's quite a useful thing to look at. Fantastic, are there any other questions from Councillors, Councillor Collins? Thank you Chair, actually it's leading into complaints actually, so on 3.2.1 it tells us that this mandatory code from April from 2024 from the Local Government is now going to be April 26, has that helped us, as that means why you've, I would say, deprioritised complaints, but move them in a less critical position? So interestingly, the changes to the complaint handling code are actually favourable for us because it cuts down our process from a three stage process to a two stage process, what it has done is allowed the team to not have to rush bringing in any changes to our policies and actually what I've said to them is bringing the changes that are favourable to us first and then we can work through the rest. So it's kind of taken the pressure off the team, landing a brand new way of working across the organisation and helping them kind of focus on things like the FOIs for the time being and giving us a longer leading time to bring that change in for the organisation by the 2026 deadline. Yes, Councillor KAIM. Thank you very much for the clear answer because therefore it leads us to 3.26 on the report rather than numbers of completing statutory complaints in time, 55.56 for children, 36.36 per cent for adults, clearly that's something we don't need to work on, isn't it, because that's not very good. No I agree, it's not, it's not great performance on paper, they are very low levels and that's not an excuse but it will skew the percentages. So I think this week we had six in adults, five in children, so you are going to get a high percentage if you miss one for example, so that might not help give a true picture. We've only got one overdue complaint in our statutory complaints as of this week. Do any other Councillors have any questions? Any comments? Okay, Councillor is happy to note the recommendations in this report, brilliant, thank you. Okay, so now we're going to move on to item 4 which will be presented by Mr. Razman who's on the screen. Okay, thank you Chair, can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, that's great, so just following on from our finalisation of the FY 22, audit at the last, all you can see, I'm pleased to report today on progress in respect of the FY 23 audit, and so our ISO 260 report sets this out, if I take you to page 3 of our report which is the key messages section of the report. First it sets out the status of our financial statements audit and confirms that that's substantially complete, subject to a few matters principally, I think the main item outstanding is related to the pension fund, we are sending the information back from the pension fund and as expected towards the end of May, and on following the receipt of that it is then final completion procedures, if we were able to conclude on the financial statements. Within the report, this report included a section providing observations arising from our work, which we can tell the pages on in a little while. The near the area, the other main area of work is around value for money, our value for money work is ongoing and that will be reported to the audit committee in our auditors annual report, which will come to the next meeting of the committee, just to know that the areas identified as potential risks of significant weakness in arrangements are noted on May 16, and we are currently finalising our work to conclude on whether any significant weakness in arrangements exists and anything identified then feeds through to our reporting which will again come back to the next audit committee. Just turning over the page in this, the first section there, we set out the key judgments in the audit process and then related to valuation investment properties, property plans and equipment and capitalisation of expenditure, valuations of pensions, assets and liabilities, long-term data and infrastructure assets, so they are the key areas, and we note there that we were summarised within the report corrected and uncorrected for the adjustments, but that there are not any significant uncorrected audit adjustments or disclosure deficiencies, and so based on the current status of the work, we anticipate issuing a modified audit opinion on the financial statements with no reference to any matters in respect of the annual goodness statement, and following conclusion, the value for money work, which we conclude on any significant weaknesses, we may need to include reference to matters in respect of that within our audit report once that's finalised. Just turning sort of the pages of the report, the following pages set out further detail on the significant risks and our work across each of the areas, and then the work around value for money is picked up on pages 15 and 16 and on page 16, we mentioned the areas of risks of significant weakness that are considered as part of the value for money work, and then on page 18, we include the control observations noted as part of our early work and management responses have been provided, there it is that as time of those will be addressed going forward. Chair, I'm happy to stop there in terms of our report and take any questions or observations from the committee. Okay, thank you, thank you for the presentation. Are there any questions from Councillors or Councillor Collins? Thank you, Chair. I do want to ask the auditor regarding page 16, I think it is, where the findings of our work regarding value for money and the risks, they are three identified, the governance leadership and the corporate peer review challenge in October 22, and the governance regarding Office of Children's Services, we've had a return of the peer review in November 23, and a much better outcome for that, and also Offset as well. So will there be any sort of qualification or support by the author's noting that actually we've moved on since this paper? Chair, I'm happy to pick that up. I think I'll call it most of that. The period under review for the value for money work is a 12-month period up to March 2023. However, as part of the overall conclusions, we will be looking at how areas, areas have progressed and moved on actions that have been taken by the authority and those that are planned as part of the overall conclusion. Are there any other questions from Councillors? Any comments from Councillors? Are we happy to note this report? Thank you. And now we'll move on to item 5, which, sorry, one second, so we can move on to item 5, which is going to be which has been presented by you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. It can be a pleasure to present the final statement of accounts for 22-23, which also includes the annual governance statement for 22-23. In respect to the annual governance statement, this originally came to order committee mid-July 23, subject-20 final, so changes have been some minor changes to that, but that's now included within the overall statement of accounts. It's probably worth recognising where the Council has moved forward in terms of the accounts position overall, just a bit of a sort of chronology around the last few years. At one point, I think we're entertaining four sets of accounts in one financial year, but for 20-21 accounts, they were actually approved on 27 April 23, that was swiftly followed for the 21-22 accounts, which signed off 19 December 23. So the 22-23 accounts you got here, obviously, on the backdrop of the hard work that's had to go into dealing with that range of accounts and the issues that have been faced by the Council, they were all set out in Paragraph 3.3. We will, hopefully, conclude in the 22-23 be quite way forward in terms of how we compare to other local authorities up and down the country in terms of signing off their accounts. We may well be aware of the government's requirement to ensure that accounts are pushed forward and dealt with as quick as possible as introduction of what's known as a backstop date, and that's going to be the end of September 24, where all 22-23 accounts need to be signed off. The progress we've made with the accounts coming here this evening and the finalisation of the Value for Money Work and the Pension Fund work, which was referred to by the Deloitte Sarahxton auditors, which we're waiting upon from Essex County Council auditors, that will enable us to sign the accounts off fairly soon, which will put us in a very good position overall and way in front of that backstop date of the September 23, and also puts us in a good position to move forward with the draft accounts timeline for 23-24, and therefore they're subsequent audit by our new incoming auditors, KPMG. The report sets out two Appendices, one obviously given the content of the accounts, which runs into a few hundred pages near on, is an overview of that statement of accounts, that's Appendix one sets that out, and Appendix two is obviously the full set of accounts that you have in front of you at the moment. So really open the floor up to questions and comments and officers are here as well to support. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you. Are there any questions for him and Councillors? Councillor Collins. Well, yes, thank you Chair, despite the voices to my left, my first point really is the finalisation in the 151 officers explained very much the process of getting these accounts finished clear that they're not able to be signed today because there is still the outstanding matters on 3.15 that you're referring to, do you think they'll be done soon? Well obviously working with the excellent auditors, they're working through the final stages of the value for money work, and obviously they're remaining bits and pieces of the accounts, so maybe more could comment on the final bits of that. We are waiting upon BDO for the pension fund assurance that comes, or the intention is that's coming at the end of May, so we're basically dependent upon someone else to enable the accounts to be signed off but hopefully fairly soon, but I don't know if Mo wants to add anything more to that, but certainly May, I would hope to have these sorts of people. Of course, just to add to what Joe mentioned there, I would expect that we'd be in a good position to be fully following receipt of the pension's information, which I think is anticipated towards the end of May, so subsequent team receives the information, I'd expect the other outstanding elements to be new and so subsequent to that information coming through, we should be able to conclude shortly thereafter. Thank you, Councillor COLLING. Thank you very much for that answer, obviously with BDO having to do their documentation, and then our call just as then agreeing with it, I assume, and making sure it's satisfactory and not raising any questions they might want to come back to the Council with, clearly that's possible. But no, thank you very much for the presentation and yes, well done to everybody for getting through this hiatus of COVID and other issues that's really caused a backlog. And to get to this situation is quite efficient and it makes the next year that much easier to run. Thank you. All right, are there any other questions, any comments from Councillors? Okay, are we happy to approve the recommendations in the report? Brilliant, well thank you. Okay, now we're going to move on to item 6, I'd like to welcome Emma, who is from KPMG, our new external auditors, and so hopefully we'll give Emma a big welcome and present this report. Thank you, Chair, so just a quick introduction, so I'm Emma Larkin, so Director from KPMG, who will be responsible for the sign of the accounts for this year. So I've got just our draft plan for you today, just to caveat, it is still draft and will remain draft until the prior year accounts are signed, but I think it's a real testament to the team here that we have been able to get a draft plan to you today, what we've obviously managed in closure of this year's accounts plus finalising two lots of prior accounts, it really stands us in good stead. So I'll just touch on a couple of points, but I'll take the report as read, but I'll have to have questions at the end, but key points just to sort of highlight to you, so on page 3 of my report, it's just setting out our planned materiality levels, so these will be the levels that we will report findings back to you, so we report any misstatements above 0.49 million, and our materiality for the accounts the whole is just under 0.8 million, so not dissimilar levels to what we've seen from the prior auditor, what is quite nice and we will obviously have prior year accounts that we will be able to review and be able to have a look at those and have no issues over open imbalances, which is obviously an issue we have got at some other authorities, and then if I just take you through one to page 5, which just sets out where we are, thinking our significant risks are likely to land, so we've got five significant risk areas, and these are just the areas where we see heightened risk of audit focus for us, so the first one is just around the potential risk of capitalization of expenditure for fixed assets, so potentially, given there is a large capital program here, there is a risk around expenditure recognition that some of that capital spend should be potentially going through, as revenue expenditure, we've also got the second risk, so two risks around the pension, so the first one is I would expect this to be a year one for us risk only, which is around the recognition of the surplus of the pension assets, so you have got quite a large surplus sort of position on the pension fund currently, we just need to make sure that we're comfortable with that recognition criteria, and say once we've got that sort of first year view on that, that should be the case that continues going forward, and then the third risk again, just around the general valuation of the pension asset there, so how that is calculated is that an area where there's a high level of estimation, the fourth risk we have there is management override of controls, that's not on the graph for a reason, don't worry, I haven't just missed a bubble, that is because that is a pervasive risk, so something that we see across the entire audit, so we sort of don't track that as having a higher risk of misstatement or impact, that is really a risk that you will see on absolutely every single audit, and it is in recognition of the fact that management, if they so wanted to, could override controls, so for that we look at sort of journal controls, any key significant estimates, and understand how they have been made, and the fifth risk we've got there is just around the valuation of fixed assets themselves, particularly those which are valued under the EUV, the existing use methodology, which is predominantly your council housing stock, so having a look at that just again because there is quite a high level of estimation and judgment involved in some of those decisions, six and seven are also linked to fixed assets, but given the relative size of those populations of fixed assets I don't consider there to be quite the same level of heightened risk as we do for the EUV population, but again we will use our values to come in and have a look at those and do some audit procedures. Other key things, the subsequent pages sort of set out each of those risks in a little bit more detail, page 13 just sets out the fact that we do on this audit rebut the revenue risk, so there is a presumed risk of revenue recognition due to fraud on any audit because of the nature of the income streams that the council is subject to, we don't consider there to be a risk in that regard which is sort of set out there on page 13. And then if I just go through, so value for money, we've set out on pages 17 and 18 our approach to value for money which may well be slightly different to Deloitte, we've had some initial, very high level initial look at value for money that will continue, obviously as we do need to see where the prior order to get to with value for money, that's sort of a key part that we look at, as well as we've got various conversations that we need to have that we are starting to set those up over the coming weeks, so we will aim to get you a more detailed risk assessment at the next audit committee. And then just in terms of the appendix, probably just the one I think it's probably just worth touching on for what your information is on page 22 of my document which just touches on our audit cycle, so just to give you some assurance that we are very much committed to helping the sector get back on track in terms of accounts production and audit completion, so our expectation is that we will come and do the audit in the summer with a target date for finalisation at the end of the year, so that will bring us back, so well ahead of the proposed backstop date for next year which would be the end of May 25, I will just caveat that with obviously we do need prior year accounts to be signed, to be able to do some of that work but we have got procedures in place to be able to enable us to get started as we have done already. That's probably all I was going to say, but happy to have any questions. Thank you, are there any questions from Councillors? Councillor Collins, sorry. Thank you very much and thank you for the presentation, thank you for introducing yourself to us, I think it's really a question maybe for officers as much as it is for you as an auditor, the valuation of assets, is there any significant difference would you say officers to the way that the previous officers, sorry, can't all just look at it regarding the valuation of assets because I can clearly see that is an issue that this Council is going to be very mindful of as it has quite a number of them and quite high value. It's certainly an area that previous auditors focused on as well, I think it's an area that all auditors will focus on because of the level of judgement involved and the sheer size of the numbers that result. So we don't know the detailed approach obviously because we haven't been through the final audit but certainly the planning document does seem very similar in that regard. Thank you, are there any other questions from Councillors? I'm sorry, I have a question for Mr. Panja who is on the screen. Oh hi there, welcome to the south end. Just two questions, first of all I'm very pleased about your commitment to complete the audit by December but I suspect this is dependent on the Essex County Council pension fund audit also being complete. So could I make a suggestion maybe to our finance people to liaise with Essex so they make sure that their accounts are done by their date otherwise ours will not be done either. So this is just, we might want to liaise with them now to get that assurance from them and the second point was I suspect Deloitte's before the leave will have made several recommendations to us from their audit. Will you be following up on those recommendations for our space? Thank you. Thank you, if I just take the first point around the pension fund so I think just two points to highlight so the pension fund will be subject to the backstop date exactly the same as all other authorities so the pension fund accounts will either be complete or disclaimed by the end of September so we will have a clear position on the Essex pension fund and then it will also be continuing to be subject to backstop dates as all other authorities. One other thing just to note is that I think we have a slightly different approach to how we deal with pension funds from our from our PPMG's point of view. We don't tend to seek assurance from the pension fund auditor. We do our own procedures so that is a difference there. In regards to the second point about following up on control points absolutely we will have a look at those and have a look as part of our own control and sort of general procedures around the control environment for the council part of that is looking at prior recommendations both in terms of council in terms of accounts type recommendations so if there are underlying control points also for value for money so one of the key things that we do is look at value for money risks or weaknesses which will raise up in the prior year and have a look as to whether we think that they may have an impact for our our opinion for the current year. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Are there any comments? No okay are we sorry does the committee accept the recommendations and this report? Thank you. Now we'll move on to item eight in which I believe is being presented by Mr Bates. Yeah thanks. Thanks Chair. So members of the committee will be familiar with this report hopefully we brought it to you since the the new regulations came out from set for financial management code of practice and the report follows a similar format. I just want to highlight a few points that this report is about our arrangements with regards to the challenges that the whole sector is facing from a financial perspective so in the background in section three we've obviously reported to to the council and various forums from cabinet meetings, scrutiny committees about the financial challenges locally we're also shared with you a lot of the financial challenges are faced right across the sector and the self-assessment itself is outlined at section four and takes you through the same approach so it's pleasing to say still that we do not believe that we are non-compliant with any of the standards within the citrus financial management code. We believe we're compliant and on two areas we believe there are still areas for improvement and I won't read all the paragraphs but there has been a slight change in terms of what we believe as officers at least as an office of self-assessment of our arrangements highlighted in 4.6 where like I say we are compliant but we think there's further work to be done and we've obviously outlined a view of the action plan as we as we go forward and the biggest challenge for the council and indeed many councils right across the country is obviously the future that we've got in terms of future sustainability and we try to articulate what we believe that the arrangements are in a good place really but you can have the best arrangements in the world but given some of the financial challenges facing this act arrangements alone will not make sure that the council remains financially sustainable and so I think it's a very reassuring report to you as charged with with governance with regards to our internal arrangements and obviously I'll pause that and happy to wait any questions or comments from from committee thank you. Thank you very much are there any questions from any councillors? Councillor Collins. I'm looking for guidance thank you Mr Page for the presented well-presented report I see that you're looking at those particular areas in the section you just highlighted to us but on the grid I'm looking at the grid as well in Amber points A and point E are they items that are at risk as well or under review on that's on page 313 of the report? Yeah the two the two that there are Amber that you just pointed out A and E we will continue to look and work with the leadership group to make sure that they're more embedded really so we believe we're compliant with the bare minimum standards of the code in those two areas but we believe that there's room for improvement right across the organisation and that's something that we'll be striving working with the leadership group and indeed right across the council and a lot of these things obviously need to be embedded right through all services one of the improvements that we did make last time was the introduction of service planning that's been enhanced and focused a little bit this time to make sure that every officer that's a budget holder takes their financial responsibilities not just seriously but they have an understanding of the drivers behind what's driving demand what's driving the cost where we can get income generation so that will be a continuing development program right throughout the council supplemented and complimented by obviously our commitment to transformational service redesign right throughout the organisation thank you Chef I left my microphone I do apologise yes I think the transformation piece will put stresses and strains to wait so I mean as we go through that process will this plan obviously be constantly reviewed and how we meet their standards as those changes might and will happen That's us up with case Councillor Colton so we will be reflecting the arrangements in accordance with our transformational program and change and service design and we promise the order committee that we'll continue to remove every six months and bring you a report back of any changes to the arrangements as a result of our experience and again it's a self-assessment by finance colleagues and also already colleagues in terms of where we would take so we'll report back in six months times about any any changes to what we're currently showing you tonight thank you Hey Councillor Cowan it's more of a comment than a question so I don't know if there are other questions for our coming for a comment and are there any other questions first before we move into comments okay we'll move straight into comments then thank you Chair I mean I just want to sort of thank officers for a job well done not just in putting them together a report but also the action plan and all the work that they've done and continues to do around our financial position I think when you look at 4.13 and 4.14 you know talking about the arrangements that have been put into place the things that have done it really kind of brings into to mind the narrative that has really gone around over the last year or so about the council's finances which I think are really underpinned by 4.8 which says that despite the multitude of financial pressures the council remains in a more financially resilient position than many other local authorities so I think that far from the picture of doom and gloom that's been painted a lot by the leader over the last year I think great great work from our council officers over a number of years not just this year but 10 15 years has enabled us to continue to remain one of the most financially resilient councils in the country and for that they need to be applauded thank you thank you councillor councillor cox Chair I think it's worth pointing out as well is that if there were no measures on no intervention we would have been one of them councils and that's got to be looked at the totality of things he's doing nothing was on an option but I think to paint pictures that every of things will tickety boo rosy and dandy is just delusional thank you councillor um are there any other comments before we close no okay um with um sorry is everybody happy to note the recommendation 2.1 in the reports and um is everyone happy to agree at 2.2 thank you perfect okay we're now again to move on to item nine um wish I believe it's been presented by mr dutton thank you chair it's again my pleasure to present the counter fraud and investigation called quarterly report I'm not going to say much because half it seems to have been in the press this week anyway and it was very nice to see us make the front page this quarter as well the recruitment of a new officer faltered again due to circumstances outside of our control we've revised our approach to that and intend to offer the post to our apprentice who qualifies in a couple of months time she's already proved to be an asset and someone we really want to keep hold of we continue with a high volume of internal investigations and this continues to challenge our ability to provide a good service to our key stakeholders um both these issues will impact on the final returns for the year which were good are less for the year than I would expect and on that note I would highlight the benefits that the team has brought to the council from our work this year to the date of the report is 562 891 000 pounds I like I said this is good but is substantially lower than I would expect during a national fraud initiative year to address this we intend to submit a business case to expand the team by one officer given that we consistently recover or save two three times our budget I do not expect it to be a difficult sale but I would appreciate the committee's continued report in this regard and I'm happy to answer any questions chair thank you very much and are there any questions so let's answer the hollens thank you chair and through your chair as well just want to refer to page 318 and 4.7 I'm really happy to see that steps have been taken to make fighting fraud in local government anti-monthly laundering courses mandatory for all staff my question is um what does what does that look like what are those courses look like they're going to be online or they're going to be one-to-one thank you the courses for all staff are um e-learning courses written and designed by the team um yeah they they they they can pick and choose different into pal them when they're like well thank you chair again through you will they will they be assessed will staff be assessed on on their knowledge at the end of those courses and also a second question on that will they be regular refreshing refresh courses to ensure that everybody remembers what they learn because of the importance of this this matter there is there is knowledge test at the end of both of those and both of those courses as far as repeated taking them I think that's on the table but it is yeah if we were I think it off the top of my head I think we were talking every two years thank you chair I don't please that they're going to repeat this because I would I would ask you to consider doing it more regularly I would say every 12 months but that's just a my opinion okay thank you chair thank you councillor councillor full card you had a question yes thank you chair can I just continue on that subject how long or what's the timeline for getting all the staff through that particular course I don't know but when they when they when they publish the the list of mandatory courses full staff that there is a time limit for them to complete all of them thank you and kind of just ask will that be built into the induction programme for a new staff coming in yes it will if it's part of the mandatory courses in stuff they have to when they join I've also had something added to the induction pack as well that introduces them to the counter floor team tells them what we do and quite strongly reminds them that there are responsibilities to behave themselves can I continue well that will include obviously full time staff will that be applicable to and part-time staff I don't know for sure but I would assume so yes yes yes that's fine right and I think it takes some news about their apprentice being promoted so does that mean there's a vacancy you'll be taken on another apprentice it's it's something I'm seriously considering yes I mean this one's been so successful but my main aim at the moment is to try to get another full-time staff member on the team so we can start doing a job a bit more better a bit more better thank you but it would be good if you had another apprentice I'm all I'm very keen on on apprenticeships and I think that's excellent news the first part again promoted so that must give you kind of encouragement to take another one on anyway thank you thank you councillor are there any other questions councillor Collins thank you chair yes mr. not thank you for your thorough report just a comment that under 4.3 yes I would hope this committee would support you in that I think it would prove value to the council and also to stop at least putting to people's minds that if they do want to be act fraudulently while under our employment or our engagement that they will get caught 4.4 and there's a matter you just refer to at the beginning about the press but that's the point in the way it's written here that a further five of us is being either dismissed or resigning while on investigation fine but assume if there's prosecutions to be pursued they will still be pursued yes yes certainly certainly the ones being prosecuted that they I think at least one of them resigned before the disciplinary procedure was complete and there being prosecuted it's a fine balance between you know you know with relatively small still criminal offenses whether it's in a public interest to continue to pursue them while we've actually achieved results bearing in mind it's also in the public interest as to how we spend our money and prosecutions are certainly not cheap thank you very much for your answer Stutton and yes I think example making those important because this item is coming to the press as you described and I've noticed other one other employee saying well there's still rest of us are very good people and so sometimes pursuing people is to give an example where we won't tolerate it regardless and I know there's a little bit of us involved here and I understand that but I still think the council should be seen to be tough with people like this if possible and that is a judgement call I understand thank you thank you Mr. Pangea on the screen would you like to ask a question I think thank you again for a very comprehensive report just one comment and one question if I could say the comment was that I'm very pleased with the NFI results you obviously had some successes there so well done the question was on cyber fraud how is the work on cyber fraud shared or split between yourselves and internal audit because there's no mention of cyber fraud in your report but there is some in internal audit report so could you just share with me how you deal with this please well the ICT the main hub for the the main attacks on the council cyber crime wise a lot of the stuff that that we've come through tend to be what they call cyber enabled crime where modern technology is just making it easier to commit towards the people would have committed any way in the old days for example how easy it is to forge a bank statement these days is remarkably easy if you've got software but we deal with that in conjunction with ICT quite often as well we're we're we're to prove proof and proof stuff but but we don't have a single approach depends on on on on what's what's what's happened and the sort of thing that they've been doing check I'd come in and just from so the question was about internal audit as well as counter fraud so as mr. Pangea will kind of expect from us I expect the internal audit focus is more about the arrangements and the controls that are in place to minimize the water tackle the risk of cyber fraud that we are and everybody is experiencing so from all it perspective we're focused on kind of have ICT got the right controls in place the right resources focused on the right things whereas the fraud team tend to pick up when something's gone wrong and there's some we have been attacked and there's been some success to that attack then they'll pick up and investigate have that occur who was responsible you know are there any sanctions and actions we should take so there's a bit of a split of responsibilities there but we do work very closely together very empty thank you are there any other questions are you um counsellor corner thank you chair thank you I wonder if I can just ask a question on the appendix if I may um so on page 330 under council tax now this has been rolled over from 22 23 um and it still hasn't hit the target date and it's saying that undertake a single person discount fraud drive that reduces fraudulent discounts increases council tax revenue and increases the council tax base now I see under the status it's saying that research is still currently being undertaken and as this has already been rolled over I'm just wondering what the timescale is um and you know how much longer the delay is going to be because we're actually losing money by not actually getting this in place thank you yeah I mean I have to apologise that you know that the revenues um has been probably the the biggest victim from the rise in our internal investigations to be quite honest uh and um and probably the main reason why our returns this year are going to be lower than than we would have expected is I am raising the priority of of counts tax investigations and obviously business rates alongside them um but um where we we we are just on the verge of being overwhelmed by internal investigations three three referrals this week about staff um it's it's very difficult and I'm hoping you know if we get our extra officer and get our um our apprentice up to full speed things will improve markedly um mr vase did you want to come in? yeah thanks yeah especially just to give some assurance to the to the committee we have actually got two dedicated officers within the revenues team that do nothing else but deal with exemptions and discounts I think where we complement each other is obviously that there's a drive for promoting activity and there can be times where people you know change of circumstances forget whatever but my team we've got two dedicated officers who do nothing else but effectively challenge and check and make sure discounts and exemptions are applied correctly and there's been a huge improvement in terms of that type of check that we do it's not quite sophisticated as a fraud investigation but there's a lot of work going on within the revenues team to ensure that would happen so we've got two just to give you an idea of the scaleless two full-time officers doing the discounts and exemptions work and they've generated probably an extra three or four hundred thousand pounds of extra council tax revenue because they've challenged people about that entitlement and eligibility for discounts and exemptions and what we want to try and do in an ideal world is we do things together and some of these things of referrals and the capacity ensures team is limited and we'll be looking at that working together but there is a lot of work going on regularly this is not necessarily about fraud this is just about prompting people or are they are still entitled to a particular discount when we've got potential understanding that you may no longer live on your own you may no longer be do do it so there there is a lot of work that's going on not perfect but there's a certain amount of work doing on with regards to revenue creation by making sure that all exemptions single person discounts and all the discounts because of the whole range of them are still entitled by individual households thank you mr barns did you want to come in as well yeah thank you chair in addition to that as well um a single person discount is this data matching exercise is a take place both within the NFI scheme that was mentioned earlier where people's circumstances are matched up across different sort of data that's been held across the public sector that might indicate that that single person status isn't um isn't relevant or appropriate anymore um so the NFI does that and also I know the revenues team also do that through a kind of an Essex-wide group as well that is also doing data matching separately so there is a lot of whilst this particular line of activity hasn't happened in the audit in the fraud team's work plan there's still nonetheless a lot of activity going on around the council in terms of checking and challenging whether the exemptions and discounts being provided are appropriate and that has reaped certain results as well as as mr base was explaining thank you uh camsa columns did you have a question uh yes please thank you chair and it's in this area this appendix it's on page uh three two nine and it's the last item and really there's forward thinking here and I know that the pressure's on the department and make it very difficult to think about this but in investigations uses technology and data matching which has just been mentioned by mr buns but it's other reef types of fraud that we are may not be aware of or we need to learn from and that's what I worry about with the fast-moving world of cyber and things that can be done um is there any way we can sort of help ourselves by talking to other authorities to enter the NFI and other bodies that can help us with identifying things that we might not have spotted yet uh well I um I am uh visiting attendee to the london moral fraud investigators group um I um have been to several conferences this year particularly interesting as horizon scanning lectures and stuff like that and we are making efforts to uh re uh invigorate a um panesics fraud investigators group to to discuss exactly those sorts of things um I also get feeds from people like sci-fi and sipfer uh we should do a lot of research it's really interesting for for uh trying to predict future trends uh and anticipate and just think about how we're going to deal with them how we can stop them and protect ourselves and that sort of thing so so i'm definitely on that thank you are there any other questions from councillors any comments are we all happy to know the recommendations in this report oh sorry um mr mr pangie did you have a question just a follow-up comment on what uh councillor columns were saying I mean my uh question on cyber fraud was linked to something else as well and what comes to the calling state which is the sorry just a second which is that um uh AI is proving to be quite a worrying area across the country now so artificial intelligence and possible fraud through that is something else that you might want to think about okay that was all thank you okay um are we so are we all happy sorry to note the recommendations in this reports fantastic it will move on to item 10 um which i believe is being presented by mr bands thank you chair um so this is our course of performance report and it begins on page 333 of the pack and it's our regular report to the committee outlined in the progress we've made in delivering our plan this one is for the 23 24 financial year um since the last meeting the committee in January there's been one additional piece of work that was added to the plan and that was in respect of the work on the waste contract procurement and as well as that the team's also been assisting the council with other activities as are outlined at paragraph 4.4 in respect to the team's performance indicators as reported at section five we have had a greatest point in average level of sickness across the year but that has now stabilized and it's at that level solely because of the circumstances of one member of the team so i do expect to see a significant improvement in 24 25 as we've reported at paragraph 5.3 delivery of the plan is progressing and although we would prefer to have more work fully completed by now most of the work that has yet to be completed is well in progress the plan is being delivered and we do expect to be well placed by the time we come to complete our annual reporting in July appendix one provides a status update on each of the pieces of work in the plan and the appendices 282c report the results of our work that's been completed since we last met and just at very summary level that provides higher assurance in respect of the implementation of the agreed actions arising from the follow-up of arrangements to manage the South Essex Times partnership agreement which provided unqualified opinions in respect of a quite a wide range of grant claims as additional assurances required from many government departments now and partial assurance in respect to the contract management system arrangements in respect of rough sleepers the corporate asset management arrangements and housing allocations work all of which we've got agreed action plans in place for management to enhance those arrangements in respect to the team itself um council the fall club i'll be glad to hear that we will be seeking to recruit to our apprentice role again um through the combined council assurance service route and i'll continue to keep the committee appraiser progress with how that goes that's all i really want to say chair but i hope it's taken any questions members may have and do we have any questions from Councillors? Councillor Collins thank you Mr Barnes for your quarterly report um i'm looking at the appendix one which is the managing the business process and where you're currently sitting um there's some planning that what drew my attention on page 340 workforce planning to assess your robustness and effectiveness of the arrangements to manage the council's workforce needs and planning for future periods planning in progress are we going to see this obviously not this one actually yeah but when's it going to roll in is it going to happen next year because it's quite a key piece regarding transformation i suspect that's what it means please correct me if i'm wrong at that point it's not specifically about transformation but it will be a line to the transformation work uh so it's through to you know as it says in the plan the idea is for us to look and challenge whether the organization's arrangements to plan its own workforce are suitable um in terms of planning in progress that means our audit planning is in progress uh so that what that order has now kicked off and we've been hoping to bring the results of that back to you in july and are there any other questions from Councillors? Councillor O'Connor thank you Chair um yes thank you um page 334 under 5.3 the last bullet points is 18% of audits have been removed from the current years plan is that down to capacity of staff or specific audits that you just feel are not as important as the others can you give us some kind of indication of what kind of audits you've actually taken off please thank you yeah so the the audits that have been taken off should be included in the the appendix 1 where we I do try to put a bit of a high level kind of explanation as to why that's occurred so for example on page 341 we had planned to do a piece of work on the universal drug treatment grant but the actual department the government department to which we were going to provide that short then decided they didn't want that assurance so we obviously didn't do the work because it wasn't necessary there have been some so I also on page 341 we had a piece work planned for on the independent reviewing officers team in the Children's Services Department but that was deferred because there was a focused office to visit on that so assurance was provided to the Council through that process rather than through us so as you as you kind of say it depends on circumstances and if if the risk is perceived to decline for some reason then we will potentially look to we won't look to know do something else which is more important or if there is something else like this office did visit that comes in that does the same work that we were going to do then there's no point of replicating the work so I think if you look through the appendix 1 you should see various bits where it says why we've chosen not to do this particular piece of work at this time are there any other questions from Councillor for card? Could I just ask you excellent news on the two apprenticeships fantastic where you talk about 5.6 on the team has four vacancies I know you're covering with the salaries as you mentioned here what's sort of an update on recruiting any of those four vacancies? So right now we're not actively recruiting to those we're going to concentrate on the apprentices for now during the course of this or the last 12 months we've brought four new people into the team so obviously there's a limited amount of new bodies you can bring in at a particular time so once we've got the apprentice in place then we'll look to kind of start to think about whether we should then recruit to that particular vacancies. Councillor Burton. Thank you. Can I ask about that at page 343 that we've dropped the Green City Action Plan because and this is a bit worrying due to limited resource in the area and the progress has been stopped but when did that kind of simply is not happening at all or it's going to be slow and when did that kind of happen? So we've been talking to the people in charge of that team as we've just now through the course of the years we tried to get this piece of work going but the conclusion we've drawn is that we wouldn't they wouldn't learn anything from us coming in to talk to them and to look at what they're doing because the limited capacity that teams had for a while and the progress they've managed to make so they're still on the agenda and we will come back to it in due course but it's it's about doing the right work at the right time and not kind of telling people the things that they already know. Thank you. Do we have any comments? Are we? Oh sorry. Yes, Councillor. Yeah, just with comment on that, I was so earlier in the meeting and I was reading the in the in the in the in the big report and it talks about the 2050 and it talks about like one of the big things the city rising to the climate change challenge and yet like fewer gender items on we've got something like this and it doesn't quite match up. I don't know it's I don't think it's a real shame but yeah reading that there. Thanks. Thank you Councillor. Are there any other comments? Are we all happy to know the recommendations on this item? Brilliant. Thank you. So we'll just move on to item 11 which I believe is also being presented by Mr Barnes. Thank you Chair, that's correct. So this is our annual audit charter strategy and plan and this begins on page 365 of the PAC. So we're required by the public sector until audit standards to have these documents in place and they they explain to you and everyone else the internal audit work that we're going to deliver or the proposal is to deliver during 24/25 and how that provides assurance to the committee in respect of the Council's corporate risks. So there is quite a lot of material required by the standards so that leads to us having the charter which explains what internal audit is and what it is for which is that Appendix 1, a strategy which explains how we go about delivering that which is Appendix 2 and then a plan which explains the specific audit sort of be proposed to undertake during the 24/25 financial year which is Appendix 2a and then we've added a table which shows how that plan work contributes to providing assurance over the Council's management of its corporate risks which is at the table at Appendix 2b. These are all very similar documents to the that the committee would have seen before but they've all been reviewed and updated as necessary and the most significant changes are captured at sections 5 and 6 of the covering report. The key document really for the committee to consider is the plan which is at Appendix 2a starting on page 393 of the PAC and this reports to you the audits that we consider will provide assurance in the most useful areas for the Council. We've discussed this proposed work with senior management and CLT and then map this to the risks on the corporate risk register at Appendix 2b on pages 405 to 407 of the PAC. So that's highlighted in the report and as discussed previously in the meeting the Council does continue to face a period of significant challenges and it needs to change what it does and how it does it further as resources become increasingly constrained and the demands of the Council continue to increase. Hopefully the committee agree that our proposed work is targeting on the right risks and the right issues but I'll be happy to receive any feedback or comments the committee have. That's what I really want to say Chair but if the committee have questions I'll try to answer. Brilliant thank you for your report. Are there any questions from Councilors? No questions? Are there any comments? No, fantastic. Is everybody happy to approve the recommendations on this report? Thank you and that's everything so just before we finish if you would indulge me for a second I'd just like to say this is the last meeting this year, it's a big thank you to all the officers who have been coming along and there's a few costly items so I've heard from you a lot over the last couple of meetings and also City Council is an independent member and external bodies as well so thank you very much. And happy to close the meeting. [BLANK_AUDIO]