Transcript

Good morning, welcome to the Governance and Audit Committee. I'm Councillor Tim Harrison, Chairman of the Committee. Firstly a warm welcome to my new Vice-Chairman, Councillor Helen Crawford to my left and to my right we've got Lucy Bonshaw, Democratic Officer standing in today. Warm welcome and wishes to all committee members, cabinet members, officers and auditors. Could I ask that you please ensure your mobile phones are switched off or turned to silent mode? Usual housekeeping, not being notified of a fire alarm but if one sounds please progress out through the doors and out onto St Peter's Hill at the front of the building. If you wish to ask a question or make a comment please can I request that you indicate by raising your hand. This meeting will be recorded and can be watched as a live stream later or via the SKDC webcast. First thing on the agenda, do we have any apologies for absence please Lucy? Thank you Chairman, I've had apologies from Councillor Rob Shorrock but that's the only apologies I've actually received but I do know that Councillor Morgan has been poorly and Councillor Stevens, I haven't heard anything. Councillor Whittington. Can I just give apologies on behalf of Councillor Peter Stevens please? Thank you. Item 2, declarations of interest. Does anybody have any declarations of interest to declare today? Show of hands. If not, if it becomes apparent during the meeting please notify me. Thank you. Item 3, we've got three sets of minutes to agree. I propose we do this in bulk. This was unusual due to extraordinary meetings and exempt papers. Are there any comments on those minutes that any member of the committee would like to make? If not, can I get a proposer to accept them? Councillor Whittington. Yes Chairman, if they are taken all in bulk, I'll have to abstain. I was present at one meeting because I was a substitute previously so I was present at one meeting but not the other two so I'll have to abstain more than thank you. OK Councillor Whittington, thank you. Could I get a proposer for the minutes please? Councillor Lay, could I get a seconder please? I'll second those then thank you and then can we take a vote on those minutes please? All those in favour? All those abstaining? And all those against? Thank you. Moving swiftly on to item number 4, updates from the previous meeting. We're going to get the feedback, the internal report. Items 80, 81 and 86 are completed and the strategic risk register is ongoing. Anybody have any comments on those? OK great, moving swiftly on then. We go to item 5 and I'll go to Mr Wells please. Yeah thank you Mr Chairman. Firstly apologies from RSM who are the previous internal audit team for the Council. They've sent their apologies for today, they're unable to attend this particular meeting and indeed they couldn't meet next meeting. Of course we need the committee to consider the overall annual opinion from internal audit hence why it's still featuring on today's agenda. So I'll just quickly take you through the report but hopefully members will appreciate it's not my report so in terms of any particular questions I'm not going to be in a position to talk about them in great detail. I'd also just mention there are some further audits that are being presented today that haven't been considered by this committee previously and there's five of those and they're on page 12 of the pack if you're looking at it in paper form. These are responsive repairs, payroll, purchasing and creditors, the follow-up work they've done on the previous audits and the section 106 agreement report. Alison Hall writes in the room as Director of Housing so we'll be able to answer any questions that members may have on the responsive repairs audit. In terms of the overall opinion then an adequate opinion is being given by RSM that's on page 2 of their report and it confirms that during their time with us 13 audits have been undertaken by them which hopefully members will be reassured by given that RSM really only started work in October 23 and therefore put a lot of time and effort into making sure that the council did receive an audit opinion which is clearly I think an anxiety the committee had had when we had to change the audit to mid-year. So I think from our point of view they've done a great job on delivering the audit plan as the committee wished and they've made some real progress for us. They've done a follow-up audit as well in terms of the actions that previously agreed and they've given reasonable progress on that so from their perspective again they are pleased that the work that needs to be able to take on the recommendations are progressing as they would expect and their performance indicators again they've confirmed that they've met all those performance indicator KPIs that they've set themselves. Of the five audits they've done since last time responsive repairs they gave partial assurance for payroll, they gave reasonable assurance for purchasing creditors, they gave substantial assurance, follow-ups they gave reasonable progress and section 106 they gave reasonable assurance. Clearly the recommendations and the actions that were agreed range from high to low and will be progressing those with BDO as the new auditors who are here today in terms of follow-ups so the committee will be cited on progress of the implementation of those actions as we go through this financial year. That's probably all I need to say on it Mr Chairman in terms of those particular five audits that have been undertaken since the committee last met the details of those are in the report and members hope they've had the opportunity to read those as well but overall an adequate opinion I think is a satisfactory outcome for the audit year we've just come from and obviously we look forward to working with BDO in the new financial year. Thank you. Thank you very much for that Mr Wells do any of the committee have any questions? Councillor Crawford. Thank you as a new beta this one I've got a couple of questions. Where was I? On page 25 of the report it says no that's not the one I'm looking at. Page 47 cyber security. You've put priority medium with regards to what's happening with cyber break how do I word it people are attacking cyber attacks that's the word thank you and what happened in London hospitals only a couple of weeks ago should that not be a higher priority this is me quite not gathering. Yeah the prioritisation of the actions are linked to the assurance level that was given on this particular audit again I appreciate you won't have the context but the council did have and secured a grant from the from central government to accelerate its cyber security action plan which it did deliver within the time frame and we got a high assurance level following the implementation of those so I do appreciate that probably suggested we're not giving it due diligence but rest assured that the cyber security work that was undertaken was given a clean bill of health from government following the implementation of the action plan that we'd agreed so there is only one action outstanding on that and we will be as it says on that particular page that'll be done by the end of July but hopefully it'll be done before that so at that point we'll be satisfied that all the actions that were agreed with the audit will be done. Thank you for explaining it better to me. Councillor Whittaker. Yeah thanks chairman I've got several questions if I may it's okay if I do them separately okay thank you the first one is relating to the audit on debtors and debt recovery where we've got reasonable assurance and the report from the internal auditors says there were controls that were not being consistently adhered to in relation to new debtor creation I just wondered if you could have a bit of background to that because obviously it's really important that we get all of our income in and chase any debtors that are due to us and I have worked as a debt manager before in the past so I know how easy it is potentially if you don't have the controls in place you can have problems and the second one which is which is a finance issue relates to the audits on payroll again where we've had reasonable assurance and again report picks up there have been two areas of non-compliance again around segregation of duties well again payroll is another one of these issues where it's quite it's you know it's there has to have it instances I'm not accusing anybody here of fraud but I know in local authorities organisations if you don't have proper segregation of duties you can open yourself up to and there have been a number of criminal cases over the years where people in positions in payroll have and have you know sets of bogus employees so again just some assurance around that I'm not actually saying this is happening here but again as somebody who's a retired accountant I'm obviously interested because I'm keeping myself abreast of all sort of issues that you know do arise so if those two could be answered first and then I've got a couple more thank you Mr Chairman. Thank you Mr Wiles. Just in terms of debtors I think committee were presented with the debtors audit at the last meeting from recollection it's not one that's been done between the two meetings I think just to reassure council Whittington there were only five low recommendations on the debtors and no medium and no high I don't know if members can recall but it was one of the early pieces of work that the previous auditors had done assurance linkage here which is a fairly critical report of the debtors audits at that time and I think hopefully the committee were reassured that last time debtors was audited which was March this year there was a real step change of improvement on the debtors areas and improvements that were put in place some of the context around that and again I can't remember if members would recall the particular conversations was because the limitations of the existing system and we are embarking on a new financial system which will really strengthen some of those weak areas that council Whittington's alluded to and were featuring in those previous reports so we were accepting that there were some control weaknesses but they were inherently flaws within the old system that have been strengthened and when the new system goes live which is a matter of weeks away those legacy issues will become irrelevant as the system will take over those controls so we do accept it's still not a perfect scenario at the moment with debtors but the committee hopefully will be assured that with the new system coming in those legacy problems will be removed. In terms of payroll I might have just referred to Alison who when this audit was done Alison was still in the Head of Service role for that particular area so may be able to give more information on that particular audit. Alison do you want to come in on that please. Thank you Mr Chairman to confirm there are the separation of duties between HR and payroll it was when the audit was carried out they hadn't retained or they couldn't find three new starter forms so it was all about actually being able to check the details that were input to the system were correct and actually incorrect bank details haven't been input so all the paperwork does come from HR it's then passed through to payroll, payroll check all of the information and then somebody else also checks the information that's been input into the system so going forward a team will ensure that all paperwork is retained after it's been entered and checked. On management action two that relates to it related to the timings when contract change forms had been signed so it was the sequencing of the approval of them rather than not retaining the paperwork itself so the sequencing should be the line manager approves it, it then goes to HR and it then goes through to payroll for processing but there had been some time delays between it and the sequencing of it being signed off so going forward we'll ensure that all paperwork is signed by the line manager it then goes to HR and then goes through to payroll so just to assure the committee there is the separation of duties HR enter all payroll changes into the system they're then approved they then go through to payroll for checking so there is the clear separation of duties actually controlled within the payroll system itself. Have we identified what those delays were what was causing them? I think it related to a delay in the signing off contract changes by the line manager and then it then being passed through the process but obviously that will be monitored going forwards. Thank you. Councillor Whittington. Yeah thanks Mr Chairman thank you very much to both Richard and Alison for their answers as I've been a substitute member on this committee so I've not attended all the meetings so thanks for that and I'm pleased that the new finance system should hopefully sort lots of these problems out so thanks I'm happy with the answers I got. One general point I'm really pleased to see that our strategic risk register has been updated because I think that's really really important and I know that's an ongoing thing. The next real question is on the responsive repairs where we've got partial assurance and I know this has been quite a long ongoing issue because it's not just this administration has had issues as previous ones as well and we seem to have an awful lot of the same issues that seem to be cropping up again and again so there's not a question of saying oh it's all this administration's fault or the last it's just a whole team waste of problems and I know we've had these sorts of reports that have come through and I know the issues that are there and we struggle sometimes but I'm just wondering if it's maybe time because and I don't know if it's happened internally but it seems that we're trying to operate a system that's got so many inherent flaws for a variety of reasons and it's really nobody's fault so isn't it time maybe that we should just have a review even if it's just an internal review by the management just to see is there another way of doing this because otherwise I just fear we're going to continually just get the same type of report keep coming and coming and yet we know what the issues are yes we're trying to take steps to address it but isn't that an indication that maybe the way we're doing things in general may need to be looked at it's so so so that's just out there and I also picked up on the in the auditor responsive repairs some issues that the auditors identified about cost control and maybe the cost control have been that there was an issue with without without the costs would be in control so a bit of assurance around that thanks Mr Chairman. Thank you for that yeah I've got to say it does concern me that we've got a lot of open on the responsive repairs have you got anything to come back on that Richard or Alison sorry. Thank you Mr Chairman so just to reassure the committee we are going through all of the open jobs so they mainly relate to jobs where they have got a suspended category so we've worked through all of those we've got a few outstanding that we need to work through to identify whether the jobs have been completed and can be closed down or whether work still need to be completed where we can't identify within the system we have been contacting the customer and if they say no there is part of the repair still outstanding then we are booking appointments with them so once you're in a position where we know which repairs are outstanding we can then get a plan in place for ensuring that we are all completed within a timely manner as regards the materials contract that is monitored on a monthly basis by one of the officers that work at Turnpike and if there are any anomalies in expenditure then they do raise that with the individual operatives themselves so a good example of this would be where an operative had gone out to a heating system had purchased the wrong heater so went and repurchased the correct heater so on this date itself it looked like they actually purchased two heaters on the same day but further down it had one of them had actually been returned to the merchants so that is just one example of where they are picking up anomalies on those reports so there is that control mechanism in place we are working through all of the recommendations to ensure they all get completed there will be KPIs that will be presented to the housing OSC going forward demonstrating our performance on repairs to ensure that we are meeting the timelines that are set out within the repairs and maintenance policy thank you. Thank you Alison. Councillor Whittington I think you were saying about a report but I think Alison is really new into this job and I think we probably need to give her more time to get there you know she is playing catch up with a lot of stuff you are ok with that thank you thanks Alison. Are there any more questions? No ok thank you. Move on to the item 6 the draft internal audit annual plan. Mr Wells. Sorry do you mind if the committee formally accept the report and the annual audit opinion in order that we can then put it into the annual governance statement so there is just a formal record. I appreciate RSM don't follow a normal format so it's probably not immediately obvious but I think just for the minutes it would be helpful if the committee could formally accept the report. Right ok. I can propose that we receive the report thank you Chairman. Do I have a seconder for that? Councillor Whittington can we take a vote on that then please. All those for? Thank you. So moving on after that to item 6. Thank you chair. So my name is Gurpreet Dule I'm from BDO I'm a partner at BDO and will be now your new head of internal audit. Just before I go into the paper I was just going to say a few words so for those who don't know BDO we are a large accountancy firm the fifth largest in the UK and in the world. We are a dedicated the team that I lead is a dedicated public sector internal audit team. I'm sit for qualified and have done this within local government for the last 17 years but also work with NHS, government departments and some NDPBs as well and I oversee internal audit services or advisory services currently for kind of 15 plus local authorities so just to give the committee assurance in that the team that I lead in my experience is steeped in local government knowledge and I hope you start to see that as you see papers come to future meetings. At this stage our first task is to present you a plan and the plan obviously sets out what it is that we intend to deliver and provide to this committee and hopefully in a year's time as Richard has just done we will be issuing our opinion and our outcome as to what we have identified at the end of at the end of this audit year. So the plan takes you through a number of areas I'll just pick out a key a few key bits to give you assurance this has gone through management through the corporate management team we have reviewed your risk registers we've obviously reviewed and looked at RSMs reports as well and we have our collective knowledge and all of that comes together to then identify where we think we should be focusing our time. I think critically what you'll see in the plan probably is best to look at what I think is page 99 of the overall pack which is where it then sets out the individual reviews for 2024/25. There are 200 days in the plan there are 15 flexible days which are unassigned and obviously as the year goes on that allows us to be adaptable to amend as we go along and then you'll see the series of different reviews there. I think it's worth just highlighting because it's come out in a few different comments that have been made already any of the outstanding recommendations that RSM have raised we will be taking on board and following up so where you're talking about responsive repairs and other things we will be working with management to follow up and reporting to this committee our conclusion as to whether they are complete or not complete and providing you a status update on those. You'll also see obviously previously from RSM they have looked at in the last 12 months governance, payroll, section 106, purchases, cyber and risk so a number of key areas. Our plan then tries to build on that and focus on some similar areas but also new areas as well. So our plan will be looking at things like council tax, NNDR, main financial systems. We have a review around business continuity planning and disaster recovery. It was mentioned around cyber and what happened with the NHS trust recently in London. For me there are two elements here. Cyber is your protection of your environment and there's also then how do you respond and react and what we've heard from the section 151 officer is your cyber action plan only had one low finding and the council have made good progress. What we will be focusing on is to look at what are your arrangements to respond to a disaster or what are your continuity arrangements should something happen like the NHS trust unfortunately suffered the other week. So it will be building on some of the assurance RSM have done and now looking into a new area to provide you that assurance. There are other core areas like data protection, staffing capacity and capability, homelessness and data protection which are in the plan. So I'm happy to take any questions as to what is in the plan. I think I should also just finally note after the plan there is our charter. So under the Institute of Internal Auditors standards which we have to comply with we have to issue a charter each year. This charter might sound and look quite straightforward and to some extent it is but what it sets out is how do we as a service remain objective, how do we treat things with confidentiality, how do we uphold the ethical principles that we have to uphold in delivering our work. We issue this to every organisation and it's a requirement that we ask the committee not only to review and approve the plan but also to review and approve the charter which we will bring back to you annually. But I can say from my position there's nothing contentious in there it's a standard document that we issue. I think that's everything I wanted to say and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. Councillor Whittaker. Thanks Mr Chairman. I have to say when I read through this draft report I was really impressed by how professional it is. Just to ensure I'm a retired accountant and I've worked in the public sector and the NHS is one of the best I've seen because it goes from the point of view of looking at our strategic risk register, identifying the audits from that and then actually allocating the number of days as well. I've just not seen this before so I think it's a really professional looking report and I'm guessing that, and just one real question, I'm guessing that when you do the audit of the financial systems you'll wait until the new financial system is in place and then audit that because obviously if there's issues with the current one it's probably best to wait until the new one's in place. But Mr Chairman this is a really good professional report. Thank you. Thank you for that. Councillor Wooley. Thank you Chairman. Can I just refer to mapping the strategic risks two of two. We've got 0.8 which is a score of 9 and I'm a bit surprised there's such a difference between it and 0.12 not effectively engaging with our key external stakeholders, 9 and a 5 when I would have suggested that they would be closer together than that. I'm struggling to understand what fruitful partnerships wouldn't be part of key external stakeholders. Thank you. Thank you. Would you like to come back on that? I was just going to say on the first point from Councillor Whittington in terms of the main financial systems audit it's in quarter four. So yeah so obviously we're still learning and developing our knowledge of systems and arrangements because obviously we haven't started audits yet so I will make note of that and work with management as to whether that's something done after the new system. In terms of the other question I think that's one for management and not for myself because obviously that's a management assessment of the risk score. Paul would you like to come back on that? Yeah thank you Chairman. I think the difference is one is when you're engaging with stakeholders that's more from a consultation perspective to get information back whereas working with partners and collaborating with partners is something you're doing directly as an authority and I think therefore that's what's reflected in the scores. Is it me being particularly difficult or could that be just made a little clearer because yes absolutely if it's to do with consultations for one then here you loud and clear it just doesn't seem to be that clear on this presentation. Yeah we'll certainly take that away and look at the terminology. Thank you. Do I have any more questions on that? Okay thank you, thank you for that. I've just one question are you sure that the 15 days that you've left will be enough? We've been kind of spoilt by our last internal orders as they pulled us out the fire a little bit and they really nailed stuff down so I'm just concerned that you're confident that is. So in my experience yes we're comfortable it's enough because there are other things that we could do so we have 15 days there but we haven't obviously engaged in all our discussions with management to understand how the different systems work, what's the complexity of those and so whilst we have days in the plan here which are set out it may be that they flex a little bit and actually we realise we don't need all of those days and therefore we end up building up more of a bank of our resource days etc and if we really did come to a position where we ran out of our available resource days we're not in the business of wanting to charge you extra. We understand the financial pressures in local government we would then work flexibly to either defer something in agreement with this committee or bring something forward or to work pragmatically to find a solution to stay within the days that we have but to deliver the service required. In my experience across my authorities we haven't needed to go back by using those different approaches so I can never say for certainty but that's our experience. Thank you very much I have my confidence. Okay moving on to agenda item 7 Treasury management annual report I think this is Mr Wells. Yes I don't know if Councillor Baxter wants to introduce the report. Thank you Mr Chairman this is the final report of Treasury management activity for 23/24. The committee may recall that the financial year we're just leaving was the first year we had to present quarterly reports on Treasury management so the committee were treated to an extensive set of documents around Treasury management activity during the course of the financial year so this is the strategy responsibility to reflect back the annual position and the summary of the activities that were undertaken so this all starts in 1st of March 23 which is when the strategy was approved by council and that basically sets the framework of which we've operated within during that period. We've captured a summary of where we are in terms of our debt position which is at the page of 118 and that captures basically that largest debt is in respect of the HRA debt which is where the council bought itself out of the subsidy system for the HRA but you can see that debt is being repaid over the agreed period and we can see also that you've got a change of movement between the long term debt and the short term debt as well as you can see where we've started to make that repayment as well. In terms of investment activity then and clearly during that financial year there were significant movements on the base rate which has significantly improved the Treasury activity in terms of investment income and we actually achieved over 800,000 additional income from the budgeted figure so when we set our budgets in March 23 were fairly prudent on the interest rates but clearly they accelerated significantly greater than we'd anticipated so the out turn on Treasury activity is 1.6 million compared to a budget of 768,000 for the general fund so you can see that's a significant increase which obviously has helped the out turn position that the committee will be discussing at their next meeting. We've also spread our portfolio into a property fund as well which is called the CCLA and you can see that there's a fund in there of 2.5 million pounds and previously is a long term investment for the council because that's basically invested in properties and bricks and mortar activities and that gives us on average a return of 4.4% so the council benefited from 132,000 pounds worth of dividends on that investment during the financial year as well which is obviously very positive. In terms of the variable rate investments they were slightly down from the previous year but only modestly from 18.6 million to 18.4 million and that's where we've put monies on short term deposits as well and where we don't lock in our investments on a fixed basis for a particular duration. On the bottom of page 119 you can see a spread of our investments across the various financial institutions and probably it's worth reminding the committee that we only invest in institutions that are guided by link or are Treasury advisors to the council and we follow the credit ratings that they source for us and place our monies only in secure locations as well to ensure that there's minimal risk to their council in terms of those returns coming back to the authority as well. We also participate in a local benchmarking group and there's a summary of our comparisons on page 120 and you can see there on the average weighted return we are slightly higher than our district peers on our investments on average for each of the quarters of the last financial year you can see we're slightly ahead of them as well and on the average rated risk again we're just slightly ahead of some of our peers on that as well. Every council will have to take a different approach as to how it wants to invest its monies and will be guided by not only the financial advisors they use but also their local decision making as well and solves the balance between where you invest your monies and the returns you want to see for those investments as well. As we move into next year, sorry the current year as it were, the next item will just develop a little bit more around the ESG activities that the council undertakes because I know that's of particular interest to the authority particularly since it's made a... If they choose to go to the report for all hotline do they then undertake all that or do they liaise back with the statutory officers? Trace is dealing with the liaison so perhaps if it's helpful will you just talk through how that would work in reality? So when there's a link on the whistleblowing policy, so should a whistleblower want to raise an allegation it takes them, they click on the link it takes them to a web form and as part of that web form they have an option to remain anonymous or provide their details. So that's how that works. That web form is then received by the third party who will then inform me of the allegations and I feed that back through to statutory officers group. And then the other question was on the anonymity. I have some concerns over that because having experienced it myself here there does seem to be an underlying, not ethos, but an underlying issue of trying to find out who it was that's made the complaint. So I'm gathering now with Tracey being and undertaking the new training and all that will be covered now that we won't experience that. I'm not aware of any specific examples of that so I can then talk more generally. I think the only, from a statutory officer group perspective when we receive the whistleblowing concern I think what we will try to do is encourage whoever has raised the concern to come forward because as we can all understand having that dialogue directly with the individual is far more fruitful in terms of more information and developing say maybe a nugget of a concern that actually with further probing and conversations becomes a bigger issue or the scope becomes more defined. So I think any attempt to identify the individual will be from a good place of trying to fully scope the concern that's being raised rather than something that's slightly more concerning around some more malicious intent around that. So that would be a genuine attempt but as Tracey says the individual themselves have complete options to remain anonymous and we would respect that and if something comes in and is anonymous then it's taken as read that's the case. But unfortunately I think the success rate of investigations around anonymous ones was typically lower than ones where we've got a direct dialogue and I would probably refer to the fuel theft one. We had real opportunities to encourage that individual to give us lots more information so the initial concern was in itself wasn't very sufficient but we did have a dialogue and that enabled us to go a lot wider with that investigation than perhaps we would have ordinarily have gone with so it is very fruitful if we can. Thank you and then one last point from me. We use the word vexatious quite a lot when people are making whistle blowing complaints or I've heard it mentioned quite a lot and it concerns me because whether it's vexatious or not it should be whether the whistle blowing incident is valid or not. The vexatiousness of it doesn't come into meaning unless the actual claim itself isn't valid and I'm wondering sometimes whether we don't take them seriously if the person's made two or three issues and then we go it's vexatious so I'd like some sort of assurance on that that we are investigating them all regardless of whether people think it's a vexatious one or not. And just indeed on that I mean obviously members will be aware last year we had quite a lot of reviews around whistle blowing and one of the improvements that have been made to the system is Tracey compiles a whistle blowing report that is formulated in such a way that it ensures that there are clear outcomes or lessons learned or improvements that can be made at the end of it so rather than I think previously the the audit was critical the fact that yes we were reporting them but you couldn't have a clear audit trail of end to end and what what came from it and what were the lessons learned that's been significantly strengthened and so at the stack group which we only met this week we were we could go through each one in a very prescriptive way and we could see where what the outcome was and what if lessons that we could take from it. Lovely thank you for that anybody else got any questions Councillor Woolly. Thank you Chairman I'd just like to go to it's page seven of the whistle blowing policy or page 193 of the papers taking the matter further and then if you flick over the next page to the the flow chart I'm just wondering why the flow chart stops at the management decision and why the appeal process isn't included in there and I further suggest that the you may refer your concern to ombudsman it's just that the flow chart is great everybody gets to understand it really really easily but what happens next at the end of the process and it it just then you have to come back to taking the matter further it's just a shame that that flow chart and indeed that taking the matter further paragraph or two isn't a bit clearer than it is it just makes sense it's also almost three quarters of the job completed but not quite finished off. Thank you Councillor Woolly could we get that flow added on to the flow chart. Yeah I mean just just to explain that so on the flow chart on the left hand side it talks about feedback to the whistleblower so that that part of it then if you look back on page 193 that's the bottom paragraph basically saying we will write to the whistleblower and let them know the outcome within that letter we'll also say to that whistleblower you have a right to raise your concerns further by going down the ombudsman or whatever but in terms of the flow chart the middle section is the internal process finishes at that point because we can't presuppose they may go to the ombudsman or take that complaint further so from our perspective the management decision we've made is final we've closed our books on it the whistleblower will be written to as per the left hand side of that chart they may choose or may not to choose to take it further elsewhere but as far as the internal process is concerned we have dealt with it what we can do just to go back to Councillor Bully's point is on that green box on the left is include within that narrative that there's a right of appeal for the whistleblower themselves if they choose to but the internal process will have stopped at that point because we can't anticipate they may do that and indeed I'm not aware that a whistleblower has ever done that. I think it'd be good if we could just include that and I think that would put Councillor Bully at ease thank you. Councillor Bully. Thanks Chair. I welcome this I think it's quite a good whistle to blow it process. The flow chart itself. Which one? Sorry. The flow chart itself doesn't actually give any timeframes so in the narrative it gives you the days of feedback and acknowledgement but for ease of reading is it possible that you could just include the timeframes in it so that people if they're looking at that process they just go to the flow chart and they know exactly what's going to happen with the process. Yeah it becomes a one stop shop then doesn't it? Is that okay? Yeah that's fine. Thank you. So we can just take a vote that we note the contents of this report please everybody in favour of that. Thank you. And then back to Mr Wiles on Item 10. Yeah thank you Mr Chair. A similar process as the Whistleblowing Policy. This was last reviewed the Anti Money Laundering Policy was last reviewed by Committee in January 22 and covered the period 22 to 24 so this is an update of the same policy. Again it sits within the overall framework of the Counter Fraud Policies which includes Whistleblowing Policy, Counter Fraud and Code of Conduct. The Anti Money Laundering Policy itself is unchanged from the previous version except for changes in legislation. This predominantly deals with the Council being in receipt of monies or funds that have potential criminal motivations in terms of conversion into cash or assets and being recycled through the Authority. So this is the Council's response to such a concern should it be raised and talked through the process that would be undertaken if that was ever the case. So apart from that I don't have any particular other points to raise. It's driven by legislation, it's driven by a special requirement to have such a document and therefore be taking the opportunity to update the one that's currently in place due to lapse this year. Thank you. Thank you for that are there any comments on that? Councillor Whittington. I've got no problems with the actual document itself because I think it's an update and it was just something I noticed on page 204 under general procedures of cash payments. No cash payments to the Council will be accepted if it exceeds a thousand pounds. Do we still have something like a cash office? Is it still possible for people to come in and pay cash because I didn't think we had a cash office anywhere where anybody could actually do that? Thank you. Mr Wiles. Indeed I was I paid in 60 pounds only this morning. So we don't we don't encourage cash and we don't advertise that we take cash but clearly as you'd expect me to say if somebody comes in with a thousand pounds in cash I'm not going to turn them away. So we do still have banking arrangements, we do still have a cash receipt in function and so as I say we don't advertise it. It is significantly lower particularly post Covid as people have migrated on to different payment channels but it is something we can still accept if the matter arises. Thank you for that Mr Wiles I must declare that it was actually me that handed over the cash to Mr Wiles this morning. Any more questions on that? This statement's okay if we can take a vote to note the reports and approve the revised sorry Councillor Whittington. Oh right so you're proposing that yeah. Can I get a seconder please? Councillor Crawford can we take a vote on that please? That's unanimous thank you. And we move on to agenda item 11. Councillor Knowles. Yes thank you chair. This is to propose of the proposals for KPIs to be considered by this committee. As you're aware the corporate plan was agreed in January and we've been through all of you have been to other scrutiny committees where we've introduced KPIs to other scrutiny committees. Historically the governance committee never had KPIs to reporting to them. They've previously gone to finance but it felt appropriate and better if one particular item was brought to governance and a KPI was brought here. So these are KPIs for the new corporate plan from 2024 to 2027 and once they're approved the KPIs will become a regular part of this committee's work plan. Mid-year quarter two and end of year quarter four reports will be presented to the committee. Quarter reports will be presented to the cabinet and the corporate management team. The proposed KPIs presented today are only those within the remit of this committee. Draft KPIs have been proposed for the other relevant committees and we've already started to review or really to finish the reports for the last corporate plan and to begin the next lot will be for the current corporate plan. I've introduced these functions at quite a number of committees, scrutiny committees and you'll all have heard it but I'll say the meaning again. The meeting of these functions has underpinned the approach to developing the KPI suite. The objective has been suited to perform three functions, measure activity and performance, understand experience and outcomes and use evidence to inform and drive improvement. There are two foundation principles, fundamental principles and the selected metrics must be wholly within the council's control and they must be smart, that's specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. It is expected that they may change from time to time and they are subject to an annual review. I ask you to accept these proposals as your KPIs for this committee, thank you. Thanks Mr Chairman and thank you Councillor Knowles for presenting this. I'm really pleased with the KPI around member development because I think that's really, really important actually and I see obviously because we have now agreed to mandatory training but particularly like the KPI around Councillor's personal development plans because I think that's really, really important. The question is, I've done one of the courses that the LGA run and I know the LGA run quite a few courses, I know East Midlands Councils run courses for council development that they're a mixture of either attending a site or online. Presumably at some point if these development plans, are they for each individual council, I mean obviously there's going to be mandatory training that we all have to do, that's fine, but in terms of the personal development plan, is that really for each individual councillor to work up themselves and then speak with officers or is there going to be some element of things that you should be doing in terms of that? I know it won't be mandatory but see I've always thought, and again this is the ex-accountant speaking, the finance training for all councillors should be mandatory, that's just my own particular thing. I mean I know that it's not, but around that how will those development plans be worked to because obviously they may differ for each individual councillor outside of the mandatory training is my first question. My second one is obviously all the targets are provisional at the moment. I've been involved in implementing KPIs in various different organisations and sometimes you agree on a target and then subsequently you realise that either the target was far too easy to achieve or far too impossible to achieve and getting the right balance, so the question is the actual target, would they be subject to review and then over time evolve because obviously if something's too easy to achieve there's no challenge, if it's too hard it almost becomes a stick to beat people with and I think the science is getting the KPI. Sorry, Councillor Whittington, I mean the recommendations on note three, it says that we note that the suite will be reviewed and if necessary revised, so I think that really covers up your second question. If Councillor Knowles wants to come back to me on the first one? Thank you, Chair. On the first one, as I've mentioned at other places, we are trying to build up to achieve a charter that is offered by East Midlands by the end of next year and that's the target is to achieve it by the end of next year. This requires us, the next stage will be to form a members development group to look at some of these things that are required by the charter and one of the things that's required by the charter are individual members' development plans and these will be done with the individual members, so we'll be looking at members' particular requirements and trying to build a plan to improve their performance, improve their knowledge, to improve their skills as best we can during that time. Now not every member may be as encouraging about that as others, but that is the plan, there will be a members' development group announced soon, that's the next sort of stage to this particular move and then we'll be starting to do individual members' development plans and we would welcome the encourage of as many members as possible to be enthusiastic about these going forward. Just to answer the second one, I've said all along that I was really annoyed about one particular corporate plan on the last corporate plan, one KPI, which became an absolute nonsense and kept getting agreed on, I'm not saying exactly what it was, I've said it before on several occasions, but we kept saying it's green, it's green, it's green, everything's in it and yet it couldn't possibly be because a roofer fell in a market, these being leisure centres, so it couldn't possibly be satisfactory, so I've always advocated that we review these after 12 months and subsequently every 12 months and if anything is too simple or too easy or it's not appropriate anymore, we change it, these are plans that should be something that's there for four years and we're measuring the same things in four years when they are inappropriate. Thank you for that Councillor Knowles, I wholeheartedly agree, I for one need as much development training as I can possibly get, so I think it would be great if all members could jump on board with this. Councillor Whittington. Yeah, I just want to thank Councillor Knowles for his reply and actually really pleased there's a members development group starting, there is one of the county council and I am a member of it and he really can help to deliver training to Councillors, so I really do welcome that, thank you. Councillor Woolly. Thank you Chairman, I would just like to query the value of percentage of Councillors attending mandatory training, what are we trying to achieve with the outcome, which I would have thought would be more to do with the quality of the training, it's all very well turning up to mandatory training, but if the quality is not there, what have you achieved, what do you want the outcome to be if 100% of people turn up, because it's meaningless, I would be very cautious with that particular suggestion, that KPI, I can't see how it does affect performance and I think as Councillor Knowles has said, use the evidence to inform and drive improvement, how does that drive improvement, that particular bit. Councillor Knowles. Yes, thank you Chair, thank you, so the quality of the training we are measuring as we go along as best we can, anybody that has attended any of the training that they've done so far will be, and I've seen a note from Sam this morning asking us to comment on the quality of the training for one of the courses that have been held this week and so we'll be trying to find out whether people felt it was appropriate, helpful and all the other sorts of things and we will be trying to improve the quality of training, some of it is repetitive every 12 months as time goes on, I'll not set my views on some of the training now, that's not appropriate, but we will be finding out what people think about the training and whether they think it was quality or not quality and so that we will be seeking to improve the quality of the training as we go along as well as the amount, but one of the targets that we will be seeking to achieve will be 100% attendance on the statutory ones, the ones we've brought in at the Council last time, the four and obviously in terms of planning and licensing there has to be training otherwise you can't attend the committee, so that's a compulsive vote of anybody on those committees and we'll be monitoring that and we'll be seeking 100% on the statutory ones that we've introduced at the last Council, but the quality is something we're eager to improve as well, thank you. Thank you Councillor Knowles, I've got Councillor Crawford and then Councillor Baxter. Thank you, perhaps with the mandatory training, with the feedback you could have the percentages put there, whether it's positive or negative, if you've had 99% positive then you're on a winner, if you've had 99% negative reports of that mandatory training then you know you need to do something, but that might be more helpful along with having your mandatory training, how many, the percentage that attended and then the percentage of people who thought it was positive and negative. Can I just answer that? I have no problem with that, but if it's annual training clearly, if a course or some courses that we've run this year were negative we'd be seeking to change them, change their content or their presentation or how they were being done for next year, so it will impact on this year, it will be in next year's courses that that would result in a change and we go back to there, that we measure the activity performance and use evidence to inform and drive improvement, if some courses are not good or not satisfactory this year, it will be next year when we're trying to produce an improved course or improved response for a particular course, thank you. Thank you for that, Councillor Baxter. Yeah, a couple of things, on the quality of the training, that's not a measure of the Council, that's a measure of the people providing the training and I don't think you can say the feedback was negative or positive. In recent training sessions there are some things about it that were positive, we all learn something from going to training, but then there are other things that criticise and save room for improvement, but that's feedback that goes to the trainer and to the people who are organising the training to say either could you explain, get that trainer to up their game or could you find a different trainer for the same thing. One of the reasons why I found, I think I can guess which training we've had recently that is particularly contentious, one of the reasons why I found a problem with it is that it wasn't consistent with the previous training we'd had on the same subject, so that shows that I've been kind of trained up to recognise that I'm better at it, I'm better at understanding what I'm being told and the reliability of what I'm being told, so that's great, all that feedback means we are going to be trained better and we are going to be more, so our base level of training is going to be higher because we've been through it, I don't want to say sheeped it, but we've been through it the first time and when we get the second dose we're at a higher level and we've become even better at code of conduct and equalities and governance and licensing and so on. As for the measure, I think we need the measure in there because as a council we have decided at full council that we require all members to attend the training. If we discovered that that measure was only 50% of people who had been on the training, that presents us with a real problem, in fact two real problems, first of all those people can't attend the committees after six months, so we wouldn't have functional committees, but also it would say something about the members I guess attitude to training, if one or two members can't go for a particular reason then that's one thing but if members are as a block deciding we don't want to do training then that's a real problem for the council because all our staff have to go, quite rightly, have to go on Prevent Training and Equalities Training, which we want the highest quality training of course but they are required I think by law to go through Prevent Training and in some cases other mandatory training, so safeguarding, so at the very least I think the 56 members should be putting themselves in front of the training and giving feedback on the training so that we can by an iterative process we can improve the training year on year but that's why we have the target because if we say we're going to have mandatory target, mandatory training for all members and all members do not submit or attend the training that identifies the problem. Thank you Councillor Baxler, Councillor Woolley. Thank you Chairman, yep I hear all of that and I think I agree with all of that, I think my point was that why does 100% of people attending mandatory training mean that we've got an effective council, that's the bit that I'm trying to knit together, that you know under the priority I'm just suggesting that rather than a quantitative measure that maybe this one should be a more qualitative. Sorry I've got quite a few people waiting now, so I'll come back to Councillor Knowles first to answer Councillor Woolley. Oh sorry, okay, Charles. Thank you Chairman, just to confirm for Councillor Woolley, all the measures will be accompanied by some commentary which will discuss basically the qualitative measures which you are going into, so for example we would have say the measure of how many members went to the training plus then a shorter summary provided likely by Graham which would talk about say everything else with the training for example, what the response was, lessons learned, things like that, so that should be covered off there in the commentary. Thank you Charles. Mr Watts. Thank you, I think as well just to add to that in terms of adding a target of 100%, because these sessions are mandatory we have to have 100% as a KPI because that is obviously what the Council wanted to achieve when it set that mandatory training for all members. Similarly with the personal development plans it's a clear, well not condition but criteria in the assessment for the charter status that all Councillors have personal development plans, so again 100% is recognising that that's one of the criteria that we would need to evidence, so that's a bit of justification really. Thank you James. Thank you for that Mr Watts. Councillor Whittaker. Yeah I mean again it's coming back to this quality issue, you can have 100% attendance at a really poor course, it doesn't necessarily mean that anybody has actually gained anything from it, other than the fact that you have ticked a box to say everybody went on the course. I take the point that there are some courses that we have agreed have to be mandatory and I've got no issues with that at all, but it does come down to that quality issue, and the reason why Councillors may stop going to training could be the fact that it says well the last one we went to wasn't any good. So it's a real issue, there has to be that feedback on quality and quality has to be fermented in this, because potentially you could get a situation where you go to one training session on one topic, you learn something, the following year different trainer, they contradict the one from the previous year, now okay maybe the area has moved on, fair enough, but if you get directly contrary information to something you've actually heard previously, you then start a question well is what I've been told previously incorrect, is this the new position? It would be good if you could have the same person maybe doing the training because then at least you know who you're dealing with, but it is this balance of quantity, fantastic, anybody can measure quantity, you just tick a box. Measuring the quality is fundamental, unless we do that, the danger is that every Councillor attends mandatory training and come out of it and haven't actually learned anything because the quality hasn't been good enough, so I think I take the point we have to keep driving quality, but a mere tick box exercise I don't think is the way to actually achieve, has for me the training should be effective and merely ticking the box to say everybody went on it isn't measuring the effectiveness of the training. So if I can come back on that, I think the last lot of training I did when I first became a Councillor there was no follow up, we're now having these follow ups and we're getting the opinions back of all the members that go on these courses. We're in a catch 22 here, so what do we do, do we not do the training because we think it might not be up to standard or do we do the training and find out whether it is or not and find out how to fix it, so we've got to run one way or another with this and I think this is the best way of doing it and I think following up, going to every member and asking them their opinions on that training and whether they thought they learnt anything from it is the only way to go, otherwise it means that we're not having the mandate to train the people who aren't going. Councillor Lay. Thank you, just to follow up to what you're saying Councillor Harrison, I think as well this also forms part of the Councillor Development Programme because at that point you can say how you felt about the training and you can feed back at that, so you know if you felt that it was not the right training or you felt it was incorrect training or whatever then that's another way of feeding back to the Council and it's a measurable thing to do as well from the Development Programme, so I think we can put all these things in place but we do have to work with something to support the Council in this charter as well but also support the councillors. Thank you Councillor Lay, Councillor Stokes. I think we're moving towards starting from the standpoint that the courses aren't going to be good enough from the start, I think we've got to attend the courses, the odds are that most of the courses will be satisfactory and to the right standard, if a course is not to the right standard, surely the thing is that we need to probably go back, consider it and think well that actually wasn't really up to scratch, let's do another one that's going to be up to scratch and we all need to get to 100% to be. As a typical example the courses for the governance and audit were absolutely superb and I was told quite firmly if I don't attend it then you can't sit on that committee today, so I went and I think it was right because it was a very very good course, so I think we're just talking isolated ones and they will be and we've all been to them that don't meet the mark and probably the thing to do is do it again with a different trainer. Thank you Councillor Stokes, I totally agree and the part about the G&A training I thought that was excellent this year. Councillor Baxter. Yeah I think we're in danger of agreeing with each other because yes obviously the standard of the training is a factor, having a person to person training is going to be a different experience from an online experience, it's going to be a different experience from being sent away with a book and told to read it at home. Councillor Whittington I know has done some academic study as have lots of people and you attend a lot of lectures and they're not all fantastic, hopefully they're not all rubbish but always you learn something and I mean one of the things that I got from the training that we had lately that's been much talked about because of the quality or otherwise is that I went off and did some independent study of my own because I thought well I don't think that was right and so definitely it's provoked a conversation about the subject among Councillors and with officers and that's what we're trying to do, we're trying to encourage learning because the learning is not something that is given to you by the trainer it's something that you receive. If any Councillors don't attend the training they're not going to be provoked into independent learning and they're not going to be able to participate in the discussion to the same extent but if they all go some of them might not absorb it, some of them might be immune to the medicine but at least we've done everything within our power to make sure that people do so that if we get embarrassing incidents in social media or the paper whatever we can say well as a Council we've taken every step to ensure those Councillors are paid up in the same way as before you can go driving on the road on your own you've got to take a driving test. Most people in the room will have passed their driving test but the standard of our driving I would guess is not always exemplary maybe I'm speaking only for myself. Thank you for that Councillor Baxter, Councillor Whittington is there something fresh on this? Just one thing because something that just cropped in my mind was we're talking about in order to give this charter 100% of Councillors have to have the development plans so are we now going to be, I've got no issue with the development plan I think it's fantastic but I'll be now saying that every Councillor is going to be forced to have a development plan because I don't remember because we voted for full Council for all Councillors to do mandatory training we certainly never voted on all Councillors having a mandatory development plan and from my perspective I've got no issue with it but I'm just concerned now that perhaps we're actually you know by say every Councillor mandatory training plan that to me a coroner is ever voting on it anywhere, thank you. Mr Watts. Thank you Chairman I'm not suggesting it's mandatory for all Councillors to have a personal development plan it's a criteria of the charter if we want to demonstrate that we are charter state as an authority then you know part of that in our evidence that we submit when we're being accredited is all of our Councillors have got a personal development plan if we haven't got 56 Councillors that don't have personal development plans then that might go against us if we're you know being assessed as to whether or not we've achieved the charter status so for me the personal development plan isn't just about you know what gaps are there in your knowledge it's about you know what role do you want to be in what role do you want to have on the Council in two three four years time if you want to be a cabinet member how do you get to become a cabinet member what skills do you need what do we need to put in place for you to give you that knowledge and development so that you can aspire to be a cabinet member or a chairman of a committee or anything else so it's not just about focusing on what where the gaps are now it's about where what is your journey as a Councillor and how do we support that so hopefully it's seen as a positive thing but it's not being forced it's just something that is an expectation of the charter status that all Councillors we're demonstrating that all Councillors are engaging in in that development activity. Thank you for that Mr Watts I kind of agree with that it's it's not going to be mandated but that would have to be something that would be discussed at full Council anyway I would have thought but carry it going forward I think it as you said Councillor Whitterton it's a good idea I think it's a great idea to give ourselves a skill set and make plans for the future we're all elected for four years we obviously want to get to the fourth year and be better skilled I know I definitely need to be better skilled than when I started Councillor Knowles yes thank you chair I think as well as it not being mandatory we can demonstrate in trying to win the charter we will demonstrate that we as a Council and as a group as a development group member development group have attempted to agree a development plan with each Councillor if any particular Councillor chooses not to cooperate with us we will recall the fact that we have attempted to do it and we have suggested it but a particular Councillor may say I'm not interested that's it I'm 99 years old I ain't coming back I'm finishing next week or whatever and if that is the case we would record it as part of our evidence as a Council generally and the membership group has tried to develop such plans for every one of our Councillors and if one or two Councillors don't assist then we've got to record the fact in part of our presentation to the to the charter group okay well I think I'm sorry Councillor Crawford a lot of our Councillors are full-time workers and a lot of them struggle to get here during the day for the mandatory training to then suggest that they need to do additional training I understand that and I would be quite happy to do additional training but a lot of people would struggle with the time management so we need to keep that in mind I think you may go to them and say you know but they might turn it down it might be just logistics of times because you know you've got a family you're doing your job as a Councillor dealing with residents and all the rest of it you're doing a full-time job then you have other commitments it's not always feasible to do that extra mile just I would just like you to keep that in mind thank you. Thank you for that Councillor Crawford Councillor Baxter. Thank you yeah I understand that and while we're sat here I've been trying to think why people wouldn't do the training long-term illness might be a reason and circumstances might be a reason but there are other ways of training other than coming in here on an afternoon and listening to somebody talk and talk there are some excellent what do you call it e-learning modules on the the Lincolnshire site on all kinds of things from from diversity and parenting parenting corporate parenting responsibilities and so on which can be done in one's own time and then on top of that it might be because they are personal personal development plans it might be how to run a surgery and so you might you might go along with with Tim or or Mark and sit in on their surgery to see how they deal one-to-one with with residents because some people will be more familiar with how surgeries work than other people so there are lots of different ways to to learn I think the problem with so and personal development plans would also mean that some people do more training than others if you're a cabinet member I would expect that that you would have more need and more desire to get deeper into training than than if you're if you have no aspiration in in that regard but the real problem would be with somebody that was sat back saying well I know everything I've been elected I know everything I need to know about being a counselor thank you very much I'll just turn up for the meetings or maybe not even do that that in that case we've got a problem but yeah they are personalized and can be tailored to meet the needs and the availability of counselors thank you for that council Baxter right we've discussed that for quite some time now we're not actually voting on whether the training is going to be mandatory or not that's not what we're here to discuss the recommendations are that we approve the key performance indicators that we wish to review that we note the key performing indicators will be monitored throughout the year as determined by the committee in agreeing its work program and we note that the KPI suite will be reviewed and if necessary revised as part of the annual review process could I take a proposal on that please Councillor Stokes I get a seconder please Councillor Wooley thank you can we take a vote on that that's unanimous thank you guys so we move on to the work program does anybody have any questions on the work program everybody happy with that we'll go on to the next item then any other business business does anybody have any other business I don't as chairman today okay so our next meeting is scheduled for 17th of July and if there's nothing else I will thank everyone for attending today particularly the members and officers for updates and reports and I declare this meeting closed at eleven thirty-eight