Transcript

at 10 a.m in the council chamber. Please note that this meeting is a public meeting and is being live webcast. There is no fire drill planned so if the alarm sounds please use the exit outside the council chamber and go to the car park. Can I please ask committee members and anyone presenting to speak clearly and directly into their microphones. Please ensure all mobiles are switched off or are turned to silent. I would like to welcome the committee's new independent member Matthew Woods. I would also like to welcome the cabinet member for finance and resources David Lewis from Cobham in attendance. I would also like to welcome the cabinet member for children families and lifelong learning Claire Curran who is in attendance. I would also like to welcome the interim director of law and governance and monitoring officer Asmat Hussain. As you are aware we are now in the pre-election period for the general election taking place on Thursday the 4th of July. So guidance has been issued to all members and officers and I would like to remind members when presenting reports or asking questions to please refrain from endorsing or referencing any candidate dates or political parties standing in elections and any controversial political campaigns or policies related to the election. And I know that this won't happen in this committee because it's such a good committee. Thank you. Okay so item number one apologies and absence and substitutions. Thank you chair so we've got apologies from Stephen Cooksey and currently Aisha Azad is absent. Thank you very much Amelia. So moving on to item number two so this is minutes of the previous meeting and this will be 13th of March 2024. I take it all members have had the chance to read those. Are we all agreed that those are fair representation of the last meeting? Agreed. Thank you very much. Decorations of interest does any committee member for any declarations of interest related to any point on this agenda? Stephen. Thank you chair I just want to be 100% clear and transparent that there are items on the agenda related to the unit for an SAP item and I'm chairing the task and finish group on the resource and performance select committee and there is an item later in the counter fraud section which relates to I'll have a question on there which relates to Epson manure borough council and I'm a borough councillor at that particular council as well. So just basically making sure completely transparent. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed Stephen. Thank you and I must apologize for the buzzing out there but I think they're clearing the drains there's nothing we can do. So number four item number four questions and petitions number one members questions we haven't received any public questions we haven't received any petitions the deadline for petitions was 14 days before the meeting no petitions have been received. So moving on to item number five so this is the recommendations tracker and work plan. So this is on pages 11 to 36 of your reports. Do any members have any questions or queries or issues regarding the recommendations tracking work plan. Stephen. Thank you chair there just seemed to be quite a number of items which still seem to be lingering on the on the work plan the recommendation tracker and it would just be quite quite helpful if we can get some of these items actions closed down and possibly explore some of the reasons why they are lingering around if that's possible please. Thank you. I had this similar thing a lot of the items seem to be around the customer relations there was a target date for completion of June 2024. We're looking at you know comparative complaints figures with other authorities we're gathering data still but there's no timeline similarly on item B investigate internal investigator point investigator appointment will be beneficial for ASC and having more internal investigator roles that's still outstanding. I wonder whether we could have an update from anybody from the customer relations team as to when these issues will be dealt with or any timeline at all please. Thank you. Thank you chair and I haven't got enough a specific timeline for that we are looking at that as part of the customer service transformation program so we're trying to bring it all together into one piece of work so that at the end of it all we've got a cohesive approach. Speaking to colleagues within children and colleagues within adult services what I'm being told is that they are continuing to explore that they've not been able to give me a specific time frame for when that piece work will continue. I'm happy to take that back and feed back at the next meeting that we attend. Okay thank you very much I think we would if asked to say we would like maybe to bring this to the July audit committee would we have any definitive response from those members please those officers. Hand on heart I'd like to say yes but I can't promise I will however do my best to endeavour to get that to that meeting for you. Okay and I believe am I right Amelia the next audit committee is in September July and then September so I think if members are agreed September maybe we must have something by September then okay a definitive response for all these queries I'll be very grateful. I will endeavour to do that for you thank you. Our members agreed that we will have no no later than September but thank you very much. I think the other issue on this recommendations track and work plan was the the update from PSSA I had to sign off the final amount for this this is a 16 23 the audit fee are we anywhere near that Nicky. So this is the audit fee in relation to the 22 23 audit as far as I'm aware they haven't yet signed it off they have signed off the pension fund fee but not the full council fee yet so I'll update committee as soon as I get confirmation. Is there any reason for the delay on that at all? Not that I'm aware of although obviously the the audit of that of that financial year was only signed off at the end of March. I've chased an update but I haven't heard. Okay fine if that came to the July or do you think we'd have any I know I'm asking you a really difficult question. Okay okay fine okay maybe we can put that in July revisit that one okay. Any other queries or questions from anybody? Okay just a few notes on this a 7 23 which is the where is it annual complaints performance report an action update is included at annex a alongside appendix 1 complaints and task finish group update action. That is once again this has a number of recommendations of questions that's on page 31. This is a number of recommendations and actions and once again I think I've noted on here the progress on these but hopefully this will be definitively answered in our September order committee no later than that thank you. Also a 6 24 so I think please note that the 10th of June resources and performance select committee private online meetings confirm the digital business and insights of dbni report will now be pushed back to late June early July given that the final report is being delayed due to July's cabinet meetings and also the 11th of September 2024 work plan item two new items have been added to the agenda so this is the audit governance committee effectiveness review a self-assessment self-assessment exercise by officers and committee members against the latest sit for position statement reviewing good practice knowledge and training and the annual report of the committee highlighting the committee's activity to then be reported to full council meeting for information. So any other comments by members on this item no I can't see that so so we are asked to monitor the progress on the implementation of actions recommendations from previous meetings in annex a note the work plan at annex b and any changes to it are we all agreed fine thank you very much indeed. So coming to the one the main issues is the item number six the annual complaints performance report so this is to give the audit and governance committee an overview of the nature of complaints received by the council and complaint handling performance in 2023 24 and to demonstrate how feedback from customers has been used to improve services. So very grateful here today we've got Jessica brook the customer relations manager Sue Griselle head of customer services Tracy Saunders who's the assistant director inclusion and additional needs who's remote on teams and also we have officers remotely Luke Entwistle the assistant director quality relationships and Liz Whitby the team manager CFL customer relations. So over to you is it you Jessica I think. Thank you very much indeed. The key highlights from this report include a positive in that the overall increase of complaints recorded against the council is five percent when compared to the previous year. That increase is made up of a 26 percent increase for adult services a six percent decrease in complaints about children's services specifically with other services demonstrating an increase of 38 percent in corporate services. The overall increase of 38 percent can mainly be attributed to the accountability for parking enforcement and verge cutting that we took from the district and borough councils. Sixty three percent of that 38 percent is actually the Jessica could you just put the microphone close. We've got this buzzing going on here. That's fine. Do you want me to start again. Yeah that'd be great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is that clearer. Perfect. Thank you. So the key highlights is basically there's been a small positive in that the overall increase of complaints across the council is five percent. There was a significant decrease of sixty eight percent in home to school transport. There was an increase of 26 percent relative to adult social care a six percent decrease in complaints about children's social care with other services showing an increase of 38 percent. That 38 percent in other corporate services is mainly reflective to the taking over accountability for parking enforcement and verge cutting from the district and borough councils accounts for 63 percent of the 38 percent in total. The decrease in home to school transport services reflects the positive impact of a changed approach and structure within that service. The changes took place over a year ago but due to the fact that complaints by their nature reflect concerns about past events that approach hasn't been reflected in numbers or reported on positively until this year. Increases in complaints about the delivery of adult social care services reflect changes in how care is funded. Surrey has a high number of families receiving support and they are now required to contribute towards care costs and that's difficult to manage for the service in terms of balancing customer expectations against increasing costs given the ongoing cost of living challenges. Increased volumes of complaints can however be seen as a positive statement in terms of how accessible our complaints procedures are. We are required to have a complaints procedure that is accessible to our residents and customers. It also reflects our commitment to consider the feedback that we receive whether it's negative or otherwise so that we can use that feedback to improve the services we deliver and the customers experience. Each customer relations team records and monitors actions arising from the complaints so both positive and negative feedback. We monitor them to ensure that they are completed and these actions can be customer specific or they can reflect corporate learning such as changes in policies or internal procedures and examples of those are shown within the appendices to the main report. The underlying root cause of majority of complaints relates to good communication. A standard of communication can be subjective when the customer perceives the communication to be poor simply because they disagree with our decision. That said our times our communication can lack detail relating to further complaints or isn't specifically proactive. We know that a specific service standard isn't going to be met. We should be open and put a note on the web page. These are things that we are discussing with the web teams and we know that we are making changes towards that going forward. Experience does tell us that when we do do this the volume of contacts and complaints about the specific area are reduced when compared to the previous years. Examples of the specific detail of themes of complaints that we receive are included again within the report. Complaints about education services do reflect the ongoing national challenges in managing concerns related to families and the expectations in terms of the provision that they believe their child needs. Services are working hard to support families with the right level of support at the right time and this includes explaining why the HCP or the provision that they are requesting might not be the right support for the child. So matching desired provision to meeting assessed needs is an ongoing challenge for the additional needs and disability services. The LSPAR section within the contact centre has been and continues to be key in providing information to assist customer understanding in that area. Financial remedies we acknowledge have more than doubled when compared to previous 12 months. Within the annual report the figures are demonstrated as totals at figure 5. In 22-23 in adult services we paid £1,550 in remedies. In 23-4 that was a payment of £15,400. Other council services there were no payments made in both the years and in children and families and lifelong learning there was an increase from 258,730.53 to 525,211.59. It's important to note that a significant amount of those remedies relates to changes made by the Ombudsman in terms of how we manage payments and how we deal with remedies. So specific remedies for example £100 per month are paid on an ongoing basis until an agreed Education Healthcare Plan or assessed provision is in place. The remedy is intended to recognise the contribution in the delay and the impact that that has on the families while provision is put in place. There is an acknowledgement that the delay is associated with ongoing national challenges around educational psychologist assessments without which the process cannot be completed. In addition to this the council has a duty under section 19 of the Education Act to provide appropriate education for children who have or may have additional needs and this has contributed to the increase in the cohort of children undergoing educational health needs assessment and the volume use of remedies being paid as that process is delayed because of the challenges already mentioned. A significant amount of remedies paid in that area also reflect an element of backdated payments for the provision of education that would have been in place at an earlier date were it not for the acknowledge delays already references. Some children with more complex needs may need bespoke packages and these do take longer to put in place. Following the presentation of the annual report in June 23 we were asked about a recommendation for a review of risk presented by complaints that council be taking forward and the outcome of the review included recognition that the potential for complaints are part and parcel in recognising and undertaking any customer facing role. Complaints typically are not included in the risk registers for the council as the focus does need to be on the key risks impacting that part of the organisation. Given the high number of complaints received in CFLL and the associated remediation payments a risk for that area has been raised, specifically a risk in the CFLL directorate risk register and it sets up the planned actions to try and reduce the underlying causes of the problems with the intention of minimising future complaints. We are focusing on the next 12 months in working with services, this is across the three areas, in terms of training and collaboration continuing to support the services to feedback and learn from the areas and the feedback that we get, looking at continuing to embed an early resolution programme seeking to address complaints at an earlier stage and if possible continue to avoid increase in unnecessary complaints. We recognise that there will always be elements of complaints because people are dissatisfied but our aim is to reduce unnecessary ones and we will also continue to work with senior leaders in terms of the customer service transformation programme. Thank you. Thank you very much Jessica, thank you. I think just looking at this report it doesn't make good reading so I'm going to come to the committee to see whether they've got any issues and questions before I come in. Matthew please. There we go, I forgot how to use it, it's my first time. When we say like educational psychologist caused in a large part, what level of root cause analysis do we do to understand like well how large a part are we talking about and like what are the other factors? If I may defer to Tracey Sanders if she's present I think you're probably best placed Tracey as an AD in education to answer that one. Yes thank you, absolutely fine. So we know that we have delays in our education, health and care needs assessments, we've actually been on a recovery plan and we are getting very close to national levels now so a lot of the issues that are reflected in this report are now resolved which is good news but nevertheless families have been waiting far too long for needs assessments over the last year and we know the reason for that is because in the needs assessment process we require advice for every single child from an educational psychologist and there is a national shortage of educational psychologists so in Surrey we are at least below 50% of our establishment and what we did was contract external EPs to join us to complete statutory advice that as I mentioned has been really significant but we know that is the key factor to the delays around the needs assessment concerns that have been raised in the complaints. We do also have concerns about delays in relation to annual reviews and we again they're justified complaints, we are delayed with our processing of annual reviews so annual reviews of education health care plans are completed by schools so that's good news and that work is done but what happens is that the information is then passed to the CEM team and the CEM team aren't always quick at processing any changes that are required in an education health care plan. We've got an annual review recovery team who are working on this and they've made a significant inroad into making sure all our annual review EHCP documentation is now up to date so we've moved on a long way but we are very clear on the reasons for the concerns around delays in relation to education health care plans. Just going back to the ombudsman point about what we anticipated well we know why the complaints amounts have went up like did we anticipate that coming from the ombudsman in terms of those extra costs and the increase in complaints and did we include that within like our risk register and what have we done to sort of cost that. In terms of anticipation the ombudsman changed part way through the year the way that they managed complaints in these areas at a national level it wasn't just Surrey. They changed from directing or recommending generic recommendations so those lump sums if you like to a very unusual stance for them which was a per month remedy until things were anticipated and put in place. So we did challenge that as a local authority as did other local authorities the ombudsman were very firm in that that was their expectation. So in terms of anticipating it we couldn't have done that. What we have done and Luke you can probably testament to this in more detail in a minute is changed how the services are now looking at remedies generically and the advice that the customer relations team and CFLL are providing. Luke did you want to add anything more to that? Just to support what you've said there I think it would have been very difficult for us to anticipate for all the reasons you've given but just to reassure the committee there's been an awful lot of work going in so that we can address complaints at the earliest possible point. So there is work ongoing with additional needs and disability services on restorative practice and on improving our communication and essentially getting as head of things as we possibly can and part of you know as the report sort of details we are paying remedies earlier because actually it's in our interest to do so because we know what the ombudsman will say if we let things carry on. So we have had to change our position based purely on how the ombudsman is now operating. So you know we're trying to sort of work with them but at the same time we have a comprehensive improvement plan say to reduce the number of complaints. That's why we want to reduce complaints you know to as low a level as possible but equally recognize the changes that have come about from the ombudsman and sort of work with them you know in the most sensible and pragmatic way. Okay fine thanks. I promise this is my last question on complaints but it was just around so page 38 section 9 when we basically say complaints that aren't really considered as part of the procedure they kind of go elsewhere so data breaches in the SEN. Really the question is are we still measuring them somewhere for transparency and so where does that go? So complaints about areas that don't fall within the remit of the specific complaints procedures and there's more than one are recorded so in the depending on which team they're recorded in specific different ways but they are measured. I know that in our corporate team any concerns around FOIs or subject access requests information governance I work very closely with the corporate customer relations corporate information governance manager to make sure that we record those and we make the decision on individual case by case basis as to whether it follows the information commissioners process or whether it's something that we should manage at a local level so they are measured and I know that similar approaches are taken by the other two teams on that basis so yeah we're not we are mindful that they exist and although we're not managing them in the same way that we there is learning there for us and we need to take that on board. Thanks Matthew thanks Jessica. Just very quickly before I come back to Stephen just want to follow up on a comment you made Luke there's an improvement plan in place when was that improvement plan actually put into place and when do you expect to see improvements actually coming out of that improvement plan? If I can chair if I can just defer to Tracy who may be able to talk I'm talking about an additional needs and disability improvement plan and there is a delivery group within that work that's focused on communication relationships and collaboration so which we are we are working hard to improve sort of communication wherever we can relationships and as I say deal with complaints at the earliest possible point but Tracy I don't know if you've got any more you want to add on that? Yes happy to Luke so communications has been a concern within the SEND service for at least the last year and during that time we have had an improvement plan around communications and that has involved a number of things. One of the reasons that the SEND team are struggling to keep on top of communications is that they too struggled with their vacancy rates so during 23/24 some of the teams at some points were significantly reduced in their capacity and so obviously backlogs of work developed and additionally they were less able to be proactive or even responsive in their communications. We took a number of steps over the last year to address that we've actually doubled the SEND staffing and it is stable now bar a little bit of turnover which is typical for that particular area of work so we now have a good establishment in place. We determined a communications protocol because before that point our case officers weren't actually clear what was expected of them in terms of timeframes and so on so we have set very clear response times to communications coming in and we have established senior case managers who oversee any complaint that comes into the service to make sure a) it's responded to quickly but b) that we learn from that. We've provided relational practice training to all our case officers so that we've moved away from what felt like a little bit of an adversarial legalistic approach when complaints were raised to something that is much more solution focused and understanding of children and families and where they're coming from so that we're looking for resolution rather than pointing out the legal route to redress. So alongside that we've also got an end-to-end review of the SEND statutory process. One of the reasons our case officers were struggling sometimes to communicate effectively with parents is they weren't always in control of the whole process and we are working to streamline that and make sure that our case officers have sufficient information to get back to parents when they are raising concerns or complaints and that we are also looking to ensure to strengthen their ability to make decisions so that they are able to help to resolve issues quickly in a way that's best practice. Those measures, those last measures, aren't in place yet. We are moving into that period of change in September onwards next year and finally what we have done in the last year is establish a SEND communications hub where we've got a raft of officers who will be making proactive communications with families around specific issues. So recently went through a key stage transfer process and my parents did not yet have a named school. Those officers were phoning parents and helping them through the process and providing them with updates where they could and the team are now working as a triage for inquiries that come into the service so we've got a whole raft of work which is all about improving communications and therefore preventing the level of complaints around communications and we are seeing a dip in the level of complaints around communications. It's not eradicated and that's disappointing for us obviously but we definitely are seeing a drop now in that those types of complaints. Thank you very much Tracey. Claire you wanted to come in thanks. Thank you chairman and actually I just wanted to remind members that we had a SEND a joint SEND CQC inspection of our SEND services back in September last year and the improvement plan that you referred to chairman was the improvement plan that followed on from that inspection which was submitted to the department for education and is monitored by them so there is some external independent scrutiny of our improvement plan which of course embraces all the particular actions that Tracey just outlined there. Thank you. Thank you Claire. Helen you had a point. Right thank you very much chair. Just a couple of points actually some of which have been raised by my colleague already in a way but I just wanted a bit more detail. With regards to the local government ombudsman's guidance to provide financial remedies earlier who then makes those decisions? I can see they could be quite complicated. I mean were you were you given guidance on how much you could provide or is it just purely whatever? How does that work? So the local government ombudsman very helpfully provides guidance on the remedies that they recommend that we consider at a local level. We also horizon scan within the three teams cases that are published by the ombudsman to see to see comparisons between whatever it is that we're finding that we found fault for to see what remedies the ombudsman has proposed for other local authorities or indeed for us in the past and use that as a guide when we're looking at recommendations for services. The decision maker on whether or not the rest of the remedy is paid and the level of the remedy paid sits within the service about the complaint that whatever the complaint is about. Thank you that's really helpful thank you so we do we have some financial control over that absolutely. I mean I was very pleased to see that the amount of complaints around home to school transport has decreased quite significantly that's obviously plan worked and I'm very pleased to see that it has and certainly my inbox this year hasn't been inundated like it was previously so that's really good news and also I'm aware that following the investment by the cabinet of 15 million pounds into addressing the challenge of the delays in ECHPs that those complaints have also started to reduce and that is in addition to the fact that that figure of applications for ECHPs is still rising I believe from I mean does that mean obviously we've looked at this in other select committees here at County Hall the children's families in particular and also from the adults and social care and health committee we looked at the mind works report recently. Do you expect the amount of increases in applications for health education healthcare plans to start to reduce or will they continue you know as we put in early early help in schools or do you think it will still continue to rise and then we so we're always going to be challenged by a huge amount of work that needs as my colleague said here educational psychologists to get to get get it through and there's a massive lack of them. Do we hope that actually these applications will reduce? Is that the plan? Tracey if I may have Dr Defer you on that one. Yes that's no problem at all. Actually we've seen a levelling off of our education healthcare needs assessment requests. We had in our modelling anticipated an 18% increase because typically year on year that's what we have been experiencing. This year for the first time we have had actually no increase and we're coming in slightly under last year's needs assessment request and we think that is to do with the preventative offer that we have there. I think that the ordinarily available provision document has really helped schools families and officers to properly understand what schools should be providing in order to meet children's needs at SENS support level and therefore what the tipping point is into whether or not an EHC needs assessment might be required for a child. I think that's had a massive impact and in addition to the raft of different areas of support we have from specialist teachers for inclusive practice, speech and language therapists and other agencies who work with children before they need recourse for an education healthcare plan. So that's good news of course though this year because we're going through the backlog of the old needs assessment requests we will have a higher number of plans issued than ever before because we've had to catch up on all that work. So that will be a rise and we'll be holding more plans but over time because we've cleared the backlog if we can keep the needs assessment requests stabilised we shouldn't be seeing ongoing growth. I think that's quite remarkable then because that obviously is something that we would all hope to see. Thank you very much. Thank you Helen. Stephen. Thank you chair. A couple of follow-up points on this particular item and I want to also ask if okay some questions on the on Matthew's train of inquiry as well. So it was mentioned in the that we just heard that the communications has been a been a concern of last year and we see that later in the internal audit report as well. One of the items mentioned here was that officers weren't clear on timeframes so I'd like to understand why officers weren't clear on timeframes given there was a there's a clear process and procedure in place. Mentioned that the end-to-end review is not always in control of the whole process. What does this actually mean? Lack of visibility of items, last measures aren't in place in September last year why why not do it sooner? Proactive follow-up where parents don't have schools, officers chasing up, is the process broken? Why aren't we actually being doing better at this? So you know the communications has been a concern so if we can just clarify that why weren't officers clear on timeframes is a key one for me please if we can get that one. Who'd like to take that one? Tracy again I think we need to take that one. Yeah I can take that. I think that officers just had not been consistent in their responses and they hadn't before a year ago been given directive a directive around when they should respond so whilst there are corporate guidelines I have to say I'm not sure that they were in those officers consciousness so I think it is just that they needed very clear management lead around the expectations and they hadn't had that before and that might be to do with changes of management over time so I suspect that that's the reason for that. Thank you chair. I'm kind of reading into that that they they they didn't have any training or process or procedure to actually go from or that they just didn't follow process and procedure so can you clarify that please because again that just seems to be a huge issue that they kind of doing what they want. I wouldn't I wouldn't have ever gone as far as that I can't comment to be fair because I wasn't part of the organisation at that point I would what I would say is that there was definitely an issue around a consistent understanding of expectation in response to communications which has now been resolved. In the bulk of the report you know we have a number of complaints from from our residents and from families about lack of response etc and this is a clear indication of exactly why you know residents and families are going to be complaining if if our officers aren't clear on what the process and procedure are or is and they're not actually following it and there's nobody actually how should we say chasing them up or training or supporting or guiding them not laying laying the blame at officers door but equally it's one of these items that surely it's fairly simple to correct you know we have a we have a process we have guidelines in place I don't understand how we've dropped the ball on this one and I could understand why why our residents would be very very upset about the lack of engagement. There was a there was a follow-on point around proactive follow-up with parents that don't have schools officers chasing up wouldn't this be a key key indicator that if we have you know that should be a set of red flags in any kind of system where if if parents and children don't have an allocated school you want to basically get them allocated as quickly as possible so how is that being being addressed apart from the proactive what I would view as a knee-jerk reactive response to this that should be a procedural item that shouldn't actually need a proactive response it should be picked up as matter of BAU so how is that actually being addressed going forward rather than this proactive approach please. So I think I may have given the wrong impression about officers and how they're responding when you do receive the audit report you will see that there is recognition that officers do respond to parents and in fact do proactively communicate and indeed there are many instances where we have compliments and positive feedback I think today we're focusing on complaints aren't we which has given the impression that we're talking about the negative experience of parents what we're not talking about here is the positive experience that other parents do have so I'd like to make sure we've addressed that balance in our submission today. In terms of the second question it was around key stage transfer and whether that communication should be business as usual we would normally expect our case officers to be in touch with parents around placements progress that is business as usual but because we wanted to both manage our recovery work so bear in mind I've described a backlog of work some very specific targets that we have around making sure we issue needs assessments on time and complete annual reviews we wanted to make sure that case officers were able to balance all that work and so we didn't want to leave parents in any sort of position where they may not be getting the communications around key stage transfer given how anxious parents would be if they didn't have a school place for September so we put some dedicated resource in place to make sure that we kept that going at this particularly vulnerable point in time so we've layered on to business as usual but you're absolutely right it is a business as usual activity we just didn't want to put to put any risks around the communications in this area. Thank you chair I think I've laboured that one to death at the moment I just wanted to follow up on the point that Matthew had raised on the shortage of EPs and there was a reference made to contracting this out we're still falling short and the Matthew's question was around the root cause of the delivery of EHCPs and the the parent root cause of that is the shortage of educational of EPs so my question is why not contract additional EPs to deal with that backlog the failings to our residents and children sorry and the financial penalties being incurred by this council must surely warrant additional spend on contracting out more EPs if this is not the solution then what is the solution or action plan to resolve this? Should I come back in yes you're absolutely right that's exactly what we've done so we've commissioned over a thousand educational psychology advices from external agencies and we have cleared the backlog of outstanding advices so we've done exactly what you've you suggested. Claire do you want to thank you I know that Tracy referred earlier to the national shortage of educational psychologists and the difficulty in recruitment for local authorities in this area of work and this was something that I raised with the children's minister and with Surrey MPs because it is a whilst it is a national issue it has been a very acute problem for this authority which we've had to find a way around but I know that government ministers were quite keen to see how this could be addressed and make additional places available for training more educational psychologists for the future. Thank you Claire just add a couple points do we know how we compare with other authorities in regards to these complaints and children's services etc etc do we have any comparative where we are? We spoke earlier about the benchmarking for complaints generally across our local authorities to not give us more detail but each authority does publish its annual complaints report so we could pick up that information it would from from that perspective sit with CFLL so Luke you might want to I don't know there's any work you're already doing in that area or not. Thank you Jessica yeah just coming I don't have the information to have but but we do look at you know where we are are sitting I've not got these sort of information to hand but would be happy to provide that to the committee. Yeah yes please that that'd be that'd be great and Stephen. Thank you chair I've just got some clarification questions on the report itself if that's possible on paragraph three the report it also includes complaints made about Surrey County Council's pension service and and it's a reference here that the pension service provides a separate report on complaints received to respective committee and my question here is when does the report come to committee and the pensions complaints are dealt with on a separate complaints procedure but my understanding from the statement made in paragraph one is that this would be the corporate complaints procedure covering all of the services so the question is why are we basically saying in paragraph three that there's a separate complaints procedure for pensions but in paragraph one we're saying that there is a corporate a corporate complaints procedure covering all of the services so is so just some clarity on that for me please who could do first of all thank you. I take your point and you're correct we need to make that clear at paragraph one there are three main complaints procedures we've actually got five in total in Surrey the complaints procedure about pensions and the complaints procedure about internal personnel matters so HR issues recently problems with unit four and mirror the corporate complaints procedure the reason they're separate is because escalation is to a different overarching authority so complaints about our council operational services go to local government ombudsman complaints about information governance go to the information commissioners complaints about pensions go to a separate ombudsman the pensions ombudsman and it's because of that escalation that we talk about them as being different procedures but they're actually in terms of practicalities the same process they are both two-tier finite processes within the local authority with escalation elsewhere but you are correct we do need to make that clearer. So we we have we don't have three we have five is that correct? Five because of the escalation three in practical terms. Okay and thank you for that if I might so at the bottom of page 38 paragraph 11 the early resolution the council's online complaint system so they're talking this paragraph talks to manual complaints received and I'd like to understand how these are entered or allocated into the system and tracked so they're being received manually how are they actually entered into our online systems and how are they tracked please. Each of the three complaints teams is a business support unit and part of that role includes what we reflect we call mediating but basically they manually add the complaint to the customer record system it gets allocated a reference number and it is then monitored and tracked in exactly the same way as self-served complaints are managed. Okay thank you very much for that one. Paragraph 15 talks to many customers use the online form are contacted about delivery so how many of these items have come in via non-electronic methods? I don't have that information in front of me but I have had to cover that information for a different report and I am happy to provide that to committee. Let me just scroll down so and paragraph 35 talks to the customer relations team working with highways colleagues to identify barriers and challenges and timely responses aiming to improve response performance includes delivering localised training on complaints management webinars etc and aren't we using the same processes across the council so why is there a difference barriers or challenge? So within services there is we talked about the number of complaints procedures adult services have a single tier complaints process children services have a three tier for children social care complaints process education uses the corporate process but is managed by the children's customer relations team and I obviously manage complaints about the other company the other services. Highways are challenged have been challenged specifically this year because of the additional work they took on from the barriers the boroughs there's also challenges around their response and engagement with the process so we've developed a program where we're not targeting necessarily the officers within the customer care team and work comms team who write most of the responses for highway services they are engaged what we're looking at is a program to engage our engineers and our operational colleagues so that they understand that when we're coming to them for information to help understand why complaints are being made it's a two way street they understand the role of the complaints process but we also understand their work and the challenges that they receive and so far we've delivered five sessions of training in that area and they have been well received and we're seeing a significant improvement in the relationship between those frontline services and the customer relations team working towards addressing complaints at a sooner level so more responsive at an earlier stage including you know asking officers rather than address the complaint go and speak to the customer speak to the resident you know looking at the customer transformation program and what we're trying to achieve and building that into that procedure thank you chair thank you very much for that sounds like work in progress and we may need to come back and revisit that at some point paragraph 37 talks to the CFFFL services working towards an 80% compliance and currently at 75% of the target and the question here is we're still not at 80% what else needs to be done and what is the action plan to get to our target in place Luke did you want to come in there in terms of the work that you've been doing with services yes happy to come in there but there is a sort of comprehensive amount of work that I sort of previously discussed that's happening so we are investing in restorative practice training across the director but sort of focused initially on disabilities and disability services working with Tracy and her teams we have invested in additional customer relations resource and we are seeing you know improved timeliness again we sort of aren't complacent on this but you know I think that the work we are doing I think as Tracy sort of mentioned earlier is beginning to bear fruit so in may if I just get the I've got the detail here we did see improved timeliness in terms of complaints being answered within the 15-day target turnaround and again that is as a result of the work going on within services but also from the customer relations team so we are sort of coming at this from different angles in terms of sort of supporting our staff through increased training and development but also improving on our sort of quality assurance practices we've also have customer champions nominated from different services to again focus on communication supporting sort of messaging to staff we are rolling out plain English training which is starting this week so again it's really thinking about this in a holistic way making sure we're focusing on training and development but also ensuring that the customer relations team are working very closely with services on tracking and you know trying to make sure that we are improving our timeliness wherever we can so as I was saying earlier through the month of may this year nearly 100% of complaints in SCN services were responded to within 15 working days with the average response time now less than 10 working days inquiry responses are also now an average under 10 working days so as I say we aren't complacent on this you know that's one month but I think what that does indicate hopefully to the committee is that the work we are talking about today is beginning to bear fruit. I'll just come back give you a break just in terms of paragraph 65 what do we continue to work on that's a page 49 a lot of it is really heavily based on training everything is training training training and it almost seems as if you're starting from scratch again for staff who should be experienced and that's why I don't quite understand why there is so much training required if staff knew what they were doing and I think as Tracy was saying earlier some of the staff weren't aware of what their responsibilities were so therefore why are we doing so much training what is the benefit to the customer of all this training for example you know trade paragraph a training support to create a stronger customer ethos that cuts through each part of the organization what does that actually mean? What we're looking at it and sort of building on what Lucas said is a holistic approach we need to consider a couple of things this is the complaints report it's looking at negative feedback unfortunately for a degree and we need to consider that particularly the send area when you're looking at the number of children the cohort of children with educational health care plans the number of complaints that they receive in that area is around 10% of the actual children that plans so although this report reads very negatively in the big scheme of things it's not that bad in terms of the training and the question that you've just put through chair there are changes that are happening across the organization we've got a very live and work in progress customer service transformation program we're changing the way that we work with our customers so that's reflective in the training that we're delivering we are a massive local authority we have regular changes in staffing there's pieces of work that we're doing to try and identify where those pockets of new recruitment are so that changes how we do things organizational changes also mean that you know different staff are dealing with different areas including complaints so when we're talking about training we're looking at it on a much wider perspective than just the number of people who respond to complaints and also in terms of the training in terms of complaints process element is you know frontline officers the people delivering the services but they're not necessarily the ones responding so it's about enabling them to understand the key part that they play within the complaints process element as well so it's a lot of that that we're talking about putting on that is the changes local government ombudsman and housing ombudsman published a code which comes into force in 2026 we want to get ahead of the game we want to deliver the training and start developing and using that ethos now so that when we're measured against it we're actually up to speed so there's elements of that is what we're reflecting to as well I don't know Luke and Tracy was anything that you want to add from a service perspective similarly with you Sue in terms of customer service. I think from a customer service perspective this fits in with the customer transformation program what we're trying to do is get a completely different culture I suppose within the organization which if we're successful in doing that through trading discussion etc we will find that that actually we avoid some of these complaints many of the complaints we deal with are avoidable they are avoidable and the communication side of things can't be underestimated in actually you know making sure that we make people understand that complaints aren't the duty and the responsibility of just the complaint teams they are the responsibility of the whole organization and some of this training is about that ethos to try and get that message through and that should be echoed in things like you know appraisal documents that kind of thing it should be reinforced at every point and you know something I feel quite passionately about probably here. Because of all these changes that you can put through and I think as Tracy said the improvement plan you know won't see the benefits of it till next year September I think she was saying 25 so in terms of sort of figure 4 on page 58 the financial redress payments year on year are we expecting then that to flatline that line that the line that's literally going up and up and up because of all these you know I'm almost asking for a guarantee that that will flatline. I would have to defer to Tracy there. So we yes we would expect if we're not getting so many complaints to therefore they may be making few fewer payments for redress definitely. I just wondered if I could come back in on the training point as well to just flag that of course certainly for CEN we welcome the additional training that's available because we have got more new staff that we've just had into the service with that increase in staffing that I mentioned and also I recognize exactly what's been said around we're changing the approach too so it's important all staff are up-skilled but to reassure select committee members that alongside this training as I mentioned earlier we have a protocol which sets out expectations but behind that are very strong performance management and management actions around communications so it isn't just about upskilling staff it's also about managers making sure they monitor activity around communications and complaint management and that where there are concerns that is dealt with. Okay thank you very much Tracy, Richard and then Alan. I'm looking for assurance and I don't really know exactly where to ask this that the slough that we're in, if slough is the right word, has bottomed out and that we can look forward to improvement in the future. I have a sense that as far as the handling of complaints is concerned we're better than we were but the problems that cause those complaints is that improving too are the people behind the complaints team who are actually dealing with the delivery are they coming to the party as much as the complaints team are? I think before I defer to Tracy in terms of because obviously significant number of complaints do sit in education before I do that I think it's important to repeat something that was said before that when we're looking at complaints because of the nature of the way complaints work where we're looking at this report reflects complaints that were gathered between the previous 12 months but the areas of fault if you like or less than perfect work that led to those complaints would have happened in the 12 months before that. So historically if you like these complaints are about things that went wrong two years ago so taking into account the work that we're putting in place now we would expect to see a downturn in complaints received and an upturn in service delivery and I think that's reinforcing the comments that Tracy has already made about the work and the programs that they've got in place. Tracy would you agree with that? Yes no I would definitely agree with that obviously complaints are a mirror of our very worst self and they are reflecting to back to us the things that we already have in our development plan so I mentioned we've got an end-to-end review of the SEND service where we're addressing many of the issues that have been the cause of complaint. So yes we work and we work really really hand-in-hand with the customer relations team around how we want to address complaints and how we work hard to keep our customer relation team informed of the changes that we're making so that they're able to utilise that information when they help to construct responses for example for the ombudsman so we work very very closely together and I'm sure that's reflected I mean SEND of course is a big area that is reflected in in our proportionality of complaints but there are other areas and I'm sure that practice is reflected elsewhere. Thanks for that Helen I think you're next. Thank you I'm just trying to just establish that you know Claire Karen mentioned earlier that we had an off-state inspection in last year and alongside that the cabinet agreed a 15 million pound investment and recovery plan I think that's over the next five years that that was supported by government as well I believe is that correct and I think that that the result should be of all those actions a reduction in complaints and an increase in performance in SEND I would I hope that that's what we are actually seeing in this report so the result that we're seeing and what we're expecting is because of the investment that this council's made is that correct? So thank you thank you for that question yes I do believe that the 15 million pounds which cabinet invested in the SEND service which is over the next over three years three years 15 million pounds over three years that was specifically to help to fund the EHCP recovery plan which has run through and as Tracey said we've we are now back at national levels of timeliness which is a huge achievement dealt with that very large backlog of over a thousand children waiting for assessment and I do think that with the focus on service improvement in the SEND system which is which is will flow from the execution of our improvement plan which in turn came from the SEND inspection will lead to better better service delivery in the SEND service which in turn we would expect to see a reduction the level of complaints and if I could just say this it is very much the picture that we saw in the home to school transport team where not last year but the year before were the number of complaints that we had for that service escalated hugely I think we all saw that reflected in our own interaction with residents and some investment in that service real service improvement real strengthening up of processes and procedures that has led to a real diminution in the number of complaints and a really first-class service for children and families there and I would really expect to see a parallel trajectory for our SEND service and I really hope that we'll be able to produce and provide a much better service for children and families in future. Thank you Claire. Stephen then I'll come to you. Thanks chair just two questions if I may on paragraph 46 and 47. So paragraph 46 in the report talks to the missing provision often due to a delays in the EHCP process and I think we've talked at length about that and the appropriate provision for each child being dependent on completing first assessment. My initial question I've got noted down was how do we improve this but it seems that the increase of the EPs and the reduction of the backlog of the EHCPs can I get a view on I'm guessing that the response is that the missing provision issue will reduce and the remedy payments will reduce with the increase in EPs and the timely completion of the EHCPs can you give me a confirmation on that please. Tracey that can defer to you from the complaints process. Yes that's exactly right thank you. And the second point on paragraph 47 another cause of missed provision is related to children missing education for other reasons talks to implementing a series of recommendations and do we have a view of those recommendations and where are they described please. Tracey again if I can defer to you on that one. Yeah apologies I'm just looking for the it's are you talking about paragraph 48 which is children missing education for other reasons I see I don't have those recommendations that is managed by another assistant director but we can certainly get those to you there is a programme of work around children missing education generally that aren't related to children with SCM. Okay um chair if we might be able to receive those to committee at some point that'd be very helpful thank you. Richard just a thank you to the officers for all the hard work that's obviously going in I think we're we're looking forward to seeing next year's report as another step forward but thank you in the meantime for everything you're doing thank you. Thanks Richard I just had one question on the financial redress does that include any legal costs incurred by the council at all? No financial remedies are based on injustice based on the guidelines provided by the Ombudsman there have been exceptional circumstances I think in the 17 years I've been with the council I've seen it twice where the Ombudsman has directed us to cover legal costs for the complainant incurred as part of not the complaint process but an associated process such as appeals it is very unusual for that to happen we certainly do not recommend or cover any financial elements to that. So are you saying there are no legal costs associated with this on our for the Saracat council to pay at all? No there are no legal costs for us to pay that I'm aware of if there are any it would be associated with anything that happened maybe about the same thing but in a different way. Okay thank you very much. Any other members of the committee Stephen no no okay nobody else has any questions no so I would just like to thank you thank you all very much for for for this report I know it's not an easy area I know we've had difficult areas of at highways before and that's not an easy area either so I just like to thank you all very much for all your reports and contributions on behalf of the committee thank you. So just the recommendation so it's recommended that the committee note the report specifically the complaint management process is in place the inclusion of complaints within the risk register and the manner in which the feedback derived from complaints contributes to service improvements are we all agreed agreed thank you very much and thank you very much indeed. So the next item is item number seven so this is the 2023 24 treasury management out turn report so this report summarizes the council's treasury management activities during 23 24 as required to ensure compliance with the chartered institute of public finance and accountancy's treasury management in the public services code of practice the SIPPA code which requires the authority to approve the treasury management annual report at the end of each financial year I know we've had these in the past and audit committee so I think this is just the final annual report and I think this is over to you Nikki thank you. Thank you chair yeah I'll present this today um so as you've just set out the report sets out the treasury management activities for 2023 24 um as as members will be aware we bring a treasury management strategy to this committee prior to the beginning of the financial year for approval and in advance of formal um approval as part of the overall council tax and budget setting um council meeting we also bring you a half yearly report and we take quarterly uh summarized reports as part of the cabinet updates as well so so this is the full um out term report report for 2023 24 and a quick reminder treasury management is essentially the management of the council's cash so including our borrowing and our investment decisions I will take the paper as read so don't intend to go through it in lots of details detail but in terms of key messages um from the report the council has complied with all the prudential indicators throughout throughout the 20 20 20 23 24 financial year um due to capital program spend during the year the council's underlying need to borrow or its capital financing requirement is its technical term has increased over the course of that year um but the council didn't undertake any long-term borrowing during the course of that 12 months and instead managed it by utilizing increases in our short-term borrowing and indeed our internal borrowing which is the utilization of the cash balances that the council holds but just by the nature of its day-to-day activities um and that essentially was a conscious decision to avoid locking in higher interest rates experienced during the 23 24 financial year for long periods of time so yes short-term borrowing had higher interest rates than we've seen historically as well obviously we're we're holding those for shorter periods of time in the expectation that rates will will start to decline um also worth pointing out that our short-term borrowing is often at its highest point in march of any financial year so again committee will remember our cash peaks and troughs as you know peaks usually on what we call precept day when we collect our council tax business rate incomes from the boroughs and districts um and and the trough is is usually payday big significant out outgoing in any one day but towards the end of march we often see a kind of lull or the lowest point of our cash overall partially because we see a lot of government grants come in at the beginning of financial years which are obviously depleted as they're spent through the year and also council tax collection doesn't happen in the kind of latter half of the year so we often see borrowing at its at its peak at the 31st of march and this year particularly that short-term borrowing market between local authorities did see rates increase quite significantly in march 24 um i think representing that demand that there that there is in march we've kept borrowing very short during that period and we have seen that short-term market rates reduce um during april in terms of our investments um so again a reminder and i'm sure you're all aware we are we are required by the sit for code to consider liquidity and insecurity of our funds over and above the the return and the yield um so our investments of short-term cash balances during the year were wholly invested in money market funds spreading that that risk and ensuring liquidity um in terms of the impact that that had on our revenue budget for last year yes interest payable costs on our short-term borrowing were higher than we budgeted for because interest rates increased higher than we assumed but that was more than offset by increased interest receivable in relation to our investments the only other specific thing i was going to point out is in the final paragraphs of the report to talk about the fact that um our minimum revenue provision requirements so the minimum revenue provision in simple terms is a requirement to charge capital funded by borrowing to revenue over the life of the assets that are being funded um there have been a number of consultations done by d luck in relation to minimum revenue provision policies as some local authorities over over recent years have kind of adopted policies that weren't considered particularly prudent um so d luck have recently published their revised regulations which which make a a number of clarifications and prevents local authorities not charging minimum revenue provisions on certain capital spend ensures that investment um investment properties and loans to subsidiaries that are considered to be capital and have appropriate mrp given the valuations of the properties in relation to that so i just wanted to confirm to committee that sorry county council's minimum revenue provision policy is already fully compliant with those revised regulations we made changes to our mrp policy back in 2021 22 in anticipation of these regulations coming in happy to take any questions thank you very much nicky and yeah that was my question i'll be taking out all government legislation so you have explained that d luck mrp thank you any members of the committee have any questions or queries yeah yeah mattie thanks for that on the section 26 6 so page 66 we talk about an operational boundary um so i know it's not been breached obviously in 23 24 um and i know it's not necessarily an issue if it is breached um but my first question is how many times would we have to breach it for it to be an issue and my second question would be if we've not really touched upon it or breached it or gone near it in the last 12 months is it still a useful management tool uh so so i'll i'll answer that last question first yes yes it is still a useful management tool and essentially the operational boundary is a it's a early warning sign essentially so what we absolutely cannot breach is the authorized limit and the operational boundary sits below the authorized limit and if we were to breach the operational boundary we are we are allowed to and in the answer to your question we're allowed to breach it on multiple occasions but we are never allowed to breach the authorized limit so it works as a kind of early warning sign that we're getting closer to the authorized limit and we reset that operational boundary as part of the strategy every year and and and ensure that it's at the right level to to kind of do its job i did have one other if that's okay sorry it's going back up to section nine um where we're seeing appropriately a low risk balance um my question was really what what is an appropriate low risk balance to be honest um and you know how does that fit within our appetite yeah it's a it's a good question and it and it's a judgment call and we take into account lots of factors so the prevailing interest rates at the time um obviously the balance is between not so at times of high interest rates obviously not locking those in for long periods of time but the risk we take by not doing that is is having uncertainty and risks that rates continue to rise um generally in terms of that balance we we know based on our current capital commitments that are underlying need to borrow will increase we absolutely know we're going to need to engage in more long-term borrowing at some point in the next 12 to 24 months we are just kind of managing how much short-term borrowing we're comfortable with having before we need to do that long-term borrowing taking into account market forecasts of when they think interest rates might start to fall i can't kind of give you a perfect number because it's so basically we we sort of have a watching brief on it and then we basically use our judgment at a point in time to determine what we think is appropriate absolutely and we take external um advice on that too so we have um all in closer our treasury management advisors i meet them immediately after the meeting of the npc sorry the monetary policy committee of the bank of england um every month so i meet them within days of that meeting and we discuss that balance and where we think forecasts are going and we we utilize their expertise in that space as well thank you chair and a couple of questions on power 22 and 23 so looking at the the summary um the out terms interest paid received in the minimum revenue provision we've just been talking about so interest paid there's a variance of 3.6 million on top of that one i think he covered a little bit around that one as well so i guess the question there is why did we miss it by so much as it were i know it's probably guesswork is what you oh not not guesswork i'm not gonna educated guess um the interest received is obviously because interest rates have increased but the mlp item we're under by 2.5 million and that relates to in paragraph 23 a capital under spend on 2022 2023 so a couple of questions there is the interest paid why um 3.6 million variants and the capital under spend if we basically allocated all of this capital for funding projects or work within the council why didn't we get it done and where could we see what wasn't done possibly outside of your remit but again we can pick that up thank you no thank you very much um and you're quite right i mean it's it's more than a guess but it is an educated guess that we are we are factoring in a number of moving parts so when we set that budget it it's it's very unlikely it's ever going to be 100 accurate um but for interest payable it's exactly the same thing it is interest rate increases being above what we were forecasting so the same as interest received although in both cases our estimates of cash balances average cash balances through the year as well impact those so if our cash balances are higher than we forecast obviously we benefit essentially through increased interest receivable and then conversely with interest paid in relation to the minimum revenue provision the minimum revenue provision for each year is calculated based on the previous year's capital expenditure so when we set the budget formally in february essentially most of the calculations are done by december we're basing it on a forecast of what our out turn capital out turn will be in the following march and in 22 23 we had slippage in the capital program between what we were forecasting and where we ended up at the end of the financial year which meant that our mrp charge was less than we thought it would be when we set the budget now in the main that's genuinely capital slippage and so the spend does happen in the preceding financial year and all of that's contained in the kind of council's capital out term reporting to cabinet each month in terms of where the capital spend is going but it's based on a number of assumptions at the point that we set the budget and interest rate average cash balances capital expenditure are all sort of moving parts within those within those estimates and assumptions so i could reference the capital out and report to cabinet and i'll be able to find that information you would be able to see a summary of of where which which departments within the council experienced capital slippage what we don't provide in that is a very detailed list of individual schemes but i have that in my team would happily share it okay many things thank you chair i just had a quick question nicky just in terms of ailing close our treasury advisors how do we carry out a review of what they tell us or how does that impact on what our investment decisions are in terms of cash well how how does that link together um so i mean there are there are commission contracted service so we do a kind of three four yearly retender um um which you know we go through the normal procurement processes for those so we don't just assume it's going to be ailing close it's a limited market in terms of local authority expertise in that area but there are there are other organizations that provide that um as part of what they do so when they provide us with the ailing close forecast of interest rates they also provide us with the market averages and that kind of the the range of different assumptions that there are so we are taking into account those as part of ailing closes advice and we obviously do our own research and and and read the right media reports and do our own assumptions about whether we think their forecasts are in line with our own um so we're not just taking it's possible sorry anna you want to speak uh yes as nicky said there are only probably about three in the marketplace who and ailing close i've dealt with others and i can say categorically ailing close is far superior um they're excellent um and we um we test the market even though it's small market every what we just did it recently a year ago we test the market when the tenders aren't and um they're they're still in my opinion in our opinion fast superior to others in the market but it is tested and we do our own work as well so we triangulate that work when we have a conversation with them post the npc meeting but thanks very much i do realize there are so few of these providers in the market any anybody else have any other comments okay thank you very much uh both anna and nikki for that so it's recommended that we note the contents of the treasury management out turn report for 23 24 and compliance with all prudential indicators are we all agreed thank you very much okay moving on to item number eight so this is the external audit plan so i think we've got nikki and janet is a double act yeah very much a support act i would suggest so i will introduce janet to the committee thanks very much nikki yes i'm janet dawson i'm the partner from ernst and young and will be your appointed auditor from the 23 24 um audit cycle under the new psaa contract that they set um just over a year and a half ago for the next five years um i'm joined by my colleague lorissa midoni who is online um she would probably stay in the background i assume there she is so lorissa is the senior manager who will be um supporting me and then running the team to deliver the the audit for 23 24. what what you have in front of you um today is our initial audit plan for this this latest financial year and what i thought i would do is assume that you've read it but just pull out a few key highlights that i think are really important for the audit committee's attention at this point so you'll notice that we talk a little bit about what's going on in the wider market and clearly the calling of the general election has caused something of a hiatus on the consultation processes that were underway and and the proposals for resetting the system um surrey county council is in the fortunate position of being up to date on its reporting but there was also a proposal from sitfa that they may change the scope of reporting for 23 24. no further information available about that at this point so we are working on the assumption that you're doing full reporting scope against the existing sit for code of um audit uh sorry sit for code for reporting and that we will then have no change to the approach that we are required to apply and that's what this plan represents you'll also notice on page 87 that we are fairly clear and assertive about the roles the relative roles of the audit and governance committee as well as the finance team as well as the auditors in this relationship going forward and the reason that we've done that and been very explicit about each party's role is because this is an opportunity really to reframe for us or frame for the first time in this case that relationship and be explicit about what we expect and how we will work with you but what we expect in return so it's not a it's not a threat it's not designed to to you know put the fear amongst you it's just to say we we'd like to be explicit about that that's how we'd like to work with you and that's what we would like in return so that's the purpose of our setting out of your responsibilities there page 88 and 89 set out the key areas of risk for the audit and those are as we've assessed them to date clearly we are getting to know the organization and so they they may change and we will report any changes of those risk areas as we go through the audit I wasn't planning to go through this but I'm more than happy to take questions on them page 90 sets out our initial assessment of materiality and the the level at which we will work to consider errors in the the accounts which for us is performance materiality so that's anything over 21 million but we will plan to report any differences we identify over 2.1 million back to this committee so one of our requests is that the audit committee confirm that they're satisfied with those levels as they stand moving on then page 93 sets out our value for money responsibilities we we've highlighted that we will be looking at financial sustainability as a key area of focus however we haven't identified it at this point as a risk of significant weakness but it is something that is prevalent across the whole sector and an important given the your own reports concerning uncertainty over future funding arrangements page we also have on page 94 the scoping for the group accounts and you'll see that that features in the way in which we set out our work and in particular around investment properties that sit within your subsidiaries and we will be doing and work on those ourselves rather than relying on the subsidiary auditors page 119 has a timetable the timeline that we've discussed with nikki and her team and you know we're all committed to working towards that that would bring a result report to the november committee so subject to things going smoothly information being available and we're being able to work through any issues with nikki and her team that's the proposed timeline for this year's audit on page 122 we talk about our independence and it's just important it's in very small type but i did want you to see that we have assessed our independence of the organization and confirmed that in our view we are independent we have done ey has done work in the past for surrey county council but actually through the orbis it's it's been for the orbis partnership of which you are part so it's not been directly for the county council and there and it's not been of a significance to affect our independence to be able to be your external auditors um 423 24 but i did just want to make sure you had had sight of that point two more points so page 127 sets out the fees you'll see that those are set at 384 000 which is a significant change from the previous scale fees set under the previous psaa contract and and that is as i'm sure you're aware as a result of the re-tendering exercise that psaa moved the fees significantly for all organizations within the market and then finally page 138 which is tucked right at the back in appendix h you'll see that we've set up a couple of pages of our consideration of what non-compliance with laws and regulations means in terms of our responsibilities but also in terms of management's responsibilities and this is an area that we found as auditors is becoming more prevalent across local government where there may be a risk of fraud there may be a non an issue of non-compliance with a regulation within an organization and our responsibilities to address those have been tightened quite significantly by our regulator so i think it's important just just to set out for you what we are required to do and what we require of management in any situation that they identify in terms of notifying us and providing us with evidence to support what the organization itself is doing to minimize that risk but it does require us to do some additional work and i don't want you know if there were such a situation i don't want that to come as a surprise to you when we say we've had to do additional work in this area and and here's an associated fee so just it's just a change in the the whole dynamic of the audit relationship i'll stop there and happy to take any questions thank you very much indeed janet any members of the committee have any questions uh stephen afraid me again and so thank you very much for that introduction and i'd like to go to it's page 89 in the report on mod gov that's page 93 but uh talks about the data migration onto a new enterprise resource planning system and and it's something we'll cover off of internal order later on but you're proposing to do some audit work on that internal audit are also doing some work um they're behind because of issues with the implementation of the system but my question here is um is this actually doubling up on what internal order are doing and what you're proposing to do from external order point of view so it's a it's a good and a fair question um and i'll allow internal audit to explain the scope of their work from our perspective we're looking at the the operation of the control environment across two different systems in the financial year so what information is coming forward from the existing system and we are required to understand and evaluate that control environment for our own reporting purposes and so we need to do that for the first system and the second system and we have to document that to satisfy the audit requirements we also need to see how that data has moved from one or one system to the other to make sure that it's complete accurate and it hasn't been amended in translation now if it internal audit have done work on that we can then look at that work to be satisfied we can look at the work of the organization and internal audit to be satisfied that that's been done so we will do it as in a streamlined way as possible but also to meet our own requirements so it's got a slightly different focus thank you for that the um in that particular statement it talks to so it is in quite small type um all areas of financial statements were therefore considered the data migration processes an area of audit focus so could you just clarify if the um the actual scope for this particular work is going to be primarily on the data migration from sap to unit four for financial data only or is that going to cover all data that was migrated which would include for example payroll data as well so it's focused on the financial reporting data but where that is so where we test down into a year-end number that also relies on information that is non-financial in nature we will test that but primarily our focus is on the financial data that's flowed across okay thank you very much um another question if i might on um i think page 127 of the report which you made reference to i just try and find it again just bear with me a second so this is on the uh on the fees there are several items on the fee uh breakdown here which are to be confirmed tbc so we have a scale fee at the top and then for example the additional work um on data migrations got a tbc on it etc etc so the question here is we have a report coming before this committee in my view it's not complete um and the question would be why are those figures still tbc and when would they be available so they are tbc on the basis of having prepared the report a couple of weeks ago in terms of so there's still more work to be done to assess how much we need to do in each of these areas so for example with the data migration and the impact on the financial reporting of the the statements um we are aware that there's some significant additional work taking place within the finance team for example currently on that mapping of one system to the other for financial reporting purposes so until that work is done it's quite difficult for us to understand what issues they identified how complex that was and whether they've had to put in any workarounds which we will then need to get assurance over so that's that's an example of why that is tbc there is some more work for us to to do i think um we are scheduled per our timeline to be back in and doing work from the beginning of july with the finance team and i would i think the next audit committee is too soon to be able to give you an estimate of that but we we will be talking to the finance team throughout the audit and work out at what point we're in a position to report that back to the audit committee thank you thank you very much for that one i mean in just going to refer back to a recommendation and the chair may pick this up as well the committee is basically being asked to approve this audit plan without those figures in there so i've got to be honest i wouldn't be comfortable approving this at this particular point under that recommendation because it's effectively it's unknown cost so there's 389 in there for the external audit plan and we've got a load of tbcs in there so from my point of view i don't know what i'm approving so you know chair i don't know how we progress with this particular one yeah i don't know when would be the soonest possible time that you could get us those figures uh janet for the any additional work i know it's probably difficult but you know would it that be for the july meeting we could certainly provide a range i mean i think i think the difficulty is that you know i i can't tell you definitively what i would say for the audit committee's assurance is that obviously you have the protection of the psaa approach in terms of determining the fee so we tell you what the additional work has involved and what the outcome of that is and what our proposed fee is but clearly we don't set that you then that's then taken to psaa and they determine that on your on your behalf and on ours so that's the additional protection you have but we could bring you a range for the next audit committee i think i would agree with steve and that that would be more comfortable i think with with me if everybody else is happy with that and nikki i don't you know okay okay thank you thank you very much i just had a you asked us to confirm about the materiality levels i know i was worked for one of your competitors kpmg number of years ago so i just want to maybe you could explain why you've chosen that planning materiality why the performance materiality i know you're based on gross expenditure but sometimes we used to work with assets based on percentage of assets gross assets etc i don't know if you can expand on that for maybe other members who are maybe don't know sure so um we're required to look at what the key um areas of interest for the for your stakeholders are going to be in your financial statements and typically within local authorities the the working assumption is that the the local taxpayer is most interested in what you spent the money on as opposed to what's sitting on your balance sheet so that's why we would look at gross expenditure rather than a balance sheet figure such as net assets and you'll see in the pension fund work that we would switch that to net assets because that's what your stakeholders are more interested in in terms of the value on the balance sheet the 1.8 percent of gross expenditure is really an industry or profession benchmark so you'll typically see materiality across all industries and and sectors set somewhere between 0.5 and three percent of expenditure and within local authorities and looking across all different audit firms as well we tend to use um one to one point eight percent of gross expenditure because we think that actually that's more meaningful to the user of your accounts um and in and in particular circumstances we might drop it to 0.5 but we don't see you as a significantly risky organization and therefore we're using the the upper range of what's recognized across the profession okay fine thank you are members generally happy with that approach in terms of materiality no all right okay thank you any questions any other go on then it's just really just to confirm that we the recommendation as such we are deferring it to the july meeting okay thank you chair just in terms of where we are currently uh janet are we have we done the walkthroughs that were due in april that's all completed as per the timeline so okay did you want to make any comments yeah nikki yeah yeah two two points if i may so it's just just to confirm to the to the committee that the draft accounts were due to be published on the 31st of may um we haven't made that deadline um but we are anticipating publishing them in the next couple of weeks so we are slightly behind where we ideally would want to be but just for complete transparency to make sure the committee know that and then probably not completely appropriate under this item but important for the minutes i don't think we've formally i don't think i've formally told the committee that the 22 23 accounts were finally signed off by grants wanted on the 27th of march um so we just about made it in the financial year proceeding and and the committee you know as well we've we've discussed a number of times the the issues with the delay in getting that audit signed off but i just thought really important to confirm formally that they were they were signed off by our previous auditors grant order thanks very much for reminding us of that it was a torturous experience i think to say the least okay i don't think okay and just confirming i think we've had issues before with audit teams they're all ready to go are they jan and all set up and okay and do you have a date in june when you're actually starting the planning etc just looking at your and the further walkthroughs that you're doing as well the the the further planning is taking on taking place quietly in the background um so it's not um directly involving um it's not a team on site at the moment so uh charmain and lorissa and myself in particular are working you know to to move things forward so for example conversations with nikki um around you know the accounts the publication etc you know where the the key issues are and pulling together our documentation to make sure that the team is ready to go when they come in at the beginning of july i don't have any other points than this any other points okay thank you ever so much janet and thank you as well uh so we are we were asked to approve the audit plan 23 24 we're going to defer that to july okay if everybody's agree with that thank you very much right so moving on to item number nine so this is the internal order annual report and opinion for 23 24 and thank you very much for hanging around so long david and over to you thank you chairman that's a big sign you gave before you introduce i hope i can cheer you up slightly so the purpose of this report is to bring together all of our completed program of work for the financial year 23 24 to give you a single overarching opinion on the adequacy of the council's internal control framework risk management arrangements and governance framework which then supports and goes into the council's annual governance statement in the published accounts so you will have seen as a committee the summaries of our individual audits in previous progress reports across the year so the work itself will be familiar to you the report you have is structured in two parts the supporting evidence for our annual opinion is at the outset and then from appendix b you have the quarter four progress reports which has been assimilated into this um as other officers have said i'm going to presume you've read the paper so rather than go through them in detail i plan to signpost you to particular bits as we go um as context so i think it's useful to remember that the annual opinion itself is a professional judgment made by russ's chief internal auditor and myself so professional standards don't prescribe a set methodology by which we come to this conclusion it's not the outcome of any mechanical or formulaic process it is very much a judgment on the work that's been done um on the subject of metrics though members will have noted on page 149 there is a graph that shows the distribution of all the opinions over a four-year period um it looks very consistent year on year in terms of the actual distribution trend and if anything we've had more reasonable assurance opinions this year than four but it's important to remember that the opinion we give is based not on just absolute numbers of opinions it's very much about if there are lower areas of assurance where do they fall how significant are they in terms of the overall control environment and that's quite relevant for this year because um although we're giving the same overall headline assurance of reasonable assurance uh it is very much a reasonable assurance with caveats to it because there are significant areas of concern as we flagged in the report um and what i'm going to do is sort of just highlight a few of those to you specifically um paragraph 5.10 and onward for that section looks at our audits within the my Surrey system we took a view this year in collaboration with Anna in section 151 role that given the challenging implementation over summer and the remedial work that was required if ordered to try to do the full suite of internal audits at that time of key financial systems we would have very much got in the way i think and we wouldn't have been auditing a stable environment nor necessarily a representative environment so we agreed a limited package of key financial audits in the last year's plan looking at payroll accounts receivable accounts payable general ledger principally with the ambition that we will do the full set in the current year plan 24 25 and also follow up the audits that we've done as soon as we realistically can so there are a number of partial assurance opinions in the key financial systems either in draft at the year end or reported as final um i don't think that's necessarily a surprise given the complexity of a new erp system um so we've taken that into account and we've also taken into account management's response to the direction of travel in sorting out the challenges and the issues um so again it's not an absolute partial insurance means major problem because it's partial insurance but there is a direction of travel that's positive behind that another factor that's influenced our thinking in the overall opinion again in the context of it being reasonable assurances we have noted what appears to be a dilution in officer knowledge around key governance processes so every year we will do a sample of work looking at things such as code conduct or procurement contract standing orders just to get a sense of do officers really understand where to find them what they mean how they apply to their work and are they compliant with them certainly within the last year and arguably a little earlier than that as well we're finding that officers are not as aware of key policies as we think they ought to be even their very existence let alone being compliant with them so we are going to address some of that with working the new year plans trying to see what the root cause might be but again it's something just to bear in mind that although on the face of it we have the policies and procedures and guidance in place corporately it's how well embedded they are and how well understood they are that's quite key actually to ensuring good governance moving forward also just to bring to your attention paragraph 5.5 we've recorded the eight partial assurance opinions that were issued in the year five of those fall within the same director at the children family's lifelong learning and we've taken account of that within our new year plan having discussed those with the executive director and her leadership team all of those audits will be subject to follow up of course this is our protocol and we will report the findings of that back to committee some of those are actually in progress at the moment in course of all those follow-ups so we'll hope to get you some updates shortly um worth noting to you as well as paragraph 5.6 says that we have taken into account in our overall opinion work that was very much near completion at the end of the year but hasn't actually been issued as a final report because it's significantly advanced enough either a draft stage or very much through field work that we're in a position to assimilate that into our thinking too that's some of the negativity some of the positives i think to bring to your attention um and bringing a bit of balance to this is the significant amounts of positive assurance we've given across the year and you can see that in appendix b which is at page 159 where we list the substantial and reasonable assurance audits and all the other work that we've done um some of those audits of reasonable insurance include things like accounts receivable which is of course part of the my Surrey system so worth noting that i think too i thought it might be useful just to bring you up to speed with um what's happened post year end for some of the work so in paragraph 2.3 i'd referenced the fact that we've got work in progress as the year came to an end so to quantify that a bit for you we have 22 audits in progress from the 23 24 plan at the end of the year 11 of which were at report stage with management draft report stage so as of the end of may 13 of those 22 are now issued as finals and the distribution of opinions very much matches that graph we referenced earlier still five more of those 22 are in draft with management as well and four audits are still in field work but well progressed so we are getting through effectively the end of the 24 or 23 24 planned work nothing in that challenge is the opinion that we're giving as that's unfurled and we will be bringing that to you in q1 that is completed as part of our approach report in september so uh just a few other bits i was going to flag again appendix b i think is quite interesting because it does show the wide span of audit coverage in the year we aren't just looking at key financial systems there's an awful lot more that's fundamental to what the council does and delivers to residents that we audit you will also have seen a paragraph 5.22 we are receiving a lot of additional requests for all the work and that has been put into the plan because of the contingency and flexible arrangement that we have i can also reassure the committee that the work that's been deferred from the plan that's outlined at paragraph 5.23 the vast majority of that is in our 24 25 plan so we don't just lose sight of it it's deferred for reasons of priority or risk but if it's still relevant to be done we will make sure that we do pick it up i think all but two audits are carried forward into our new year plan you can also see at appendix a we have a very healthy green performance indicator suite to report i'm particularly pleased about the delivery indicator because we were lagging a little bit the end of q3 you may remember in delivery of draft reports we've now got beyond our 90 target which is really really good and i'm very pleased about that and the service we're offering is being well regarded by the council i think it's fair to say we could see that in customer satisfaction results and we've put in this year a new feature paragraph 6.7 the word cloud is called which picks out words that we've had back in feedback from our customer satisfaction questionnaires and the bigger the word the more often it's been mentioned is the general principle so i mean that's really really healthy and i'm very proud of both my team and the wider service who contributes to my audit plan for the work they do and the value they add back into the authority i wasn't planning on going through annex b of completed audits in summary because i trust that the summaries are clear and that you'll doubtless have questions and audits in them in the usual way so that was all i was going to say by way of introduction unless russ wanted to add anything to that but that's me done and open to questions german thank you very much indeed david i don't did you want to add anything russ at all no thank you i think david did an excellent job summarizing it but but between david and i were very hopefully can cover off any questions that members might have thank you okay thanks so much uh i just had on paragraph 5.6 just the partial assurance i note that the fuel cards have come up again that's come up before is that a recurring is a recurring problem with fuel cards at all no i don't think it is um it's an audit that hasn't yet reported so i think it's important to note that once i think you've had the report summary haven't you chairing in as part of the protocol it's reported in quarter one not as part of this report so not all members are cited in the same way on the findings so in a detailed discussion would be better in q1 report in september but in principle the audit identified a lot of anomalies because routine compliance monitoring in in year has stopped further investigation of those anomalies by the officers in the relevant teams has provided us with explanations for why those anomalies were there and i believe nicky will tell me if i'm wrong but i believe that there's no evidence of fraud i believe that it's really a question of our written policy is out of step with current practice and compliance has now been reintroduced but having said we shouldn't discuss it now i've probably gone and discussed it now but that's sort of the summary of it i think and similarly for accounts payable is one of the key financial systems is that is there a major issue or no it's more policies or procedures so again that's an audit that we've only concluded in q1 uh i mentioned it in this report because it was partial assurance and draft stage it's remained as partial assurance is it a major problem well from an audit perspective we've drawn partial assurance because the controls within that system are not as we would expect in terms of is it delivering the intended outcome is it paying suppliers are they being paid the right amount at the right time that does seem to be fine so it's a question of interpreting what the assurance means in that regard yeah because that's always worrying that you're not paying supplies the right amount and it's all being verified etc etc but from what you're saying the procedures and processes are fine yeah it's probably just worth clarifying we we do have a minimal assurance category so if the system was poorly controlled and not achieving its objectives at all it would fall into that level of assurance so partial assurance can mean say the controls may not be fully there or fully in place or complied with but outcomes can still be achieved thanks very much for the clarification any members of the uh helen thank you very much for your report and um some of it's a little bit complicated for me but i i really appreciate the the work that you're doing and the and the robust auditing of all of our services and reassurance that that gives us um so just picking up on one or two well one i'm going to pick up on one thing that hit me um in annex b was the partial assurance around 106 agreements um which is you know quite concerning because this is a partnership that obviously arrangements between ourselves and the planning authorities in surrey um and um in paragraph 1.4 it's quite concerning um of the the reasons that you felt that they were uh you raised as being issues around the way that the county council's managing their own 106 monies in particular you know a lack of ownership and um timeliness etc and i wondered what you felt should be done you know what recommendations did you get from the from the team the one in 16 that might be set to improve that performance okay thank you so um we audited this system at a time that was actually a changeover of management so there's quite a culture of shifts i think in place it's fair to say now from when we were there and a lot of the the findings and the problems of the original order are being addressed through fairly fundamental means so the officer i'm trying to think of a delicate way of saying this the officer who was perhaps not as proactive as he could have been in engaging with services and directing the use of the funds is no longer with us um there is new senior management in charge of the service who understand the challenges and pressures which to be fair are national challenges as well it's not just surrey in this position here and the midas system that underpins how the money is accounted for isn't fit for purpose but is currently being recommissioned and will address a lot of the weaknesses so the direction traveled is very positive with that in mind which hopefully allays your fears as i say it's been an issue for the council for some years to be fair and i think the audit is one of the one of the catalysts that will help sort of have a step change in improvement if i can put it that way i think you know i mean i agree with you it has been a problem and i know from my own locality it's a problem because we don't have a a local plan in the district for example that's been approved and therefore there are problems around um 106 agreements and future contracts i just wondered whether whether this should be referred to the environment select committee or whether they already are aware of this issue to follow up to make sure that things have been put in place i mean this is a great deal of this money is um spent on highways improvements in the end of the day much of which is very much welcomed by residents especially if they are experiencing you know lots of development in their area which and it's a it's a it's a really important that we have the very um agreed traffic calming and road improvement processes put in place between the planners and the developers and then the delivery by the county council i don't want to see the county council having any reason for not to be able to deliver those schemes so i just wonder whether that might be something we could find out whether or not the environment committee has looked at this um and yeah maybe you've already done that well so the process for distributing audit reports of lower assurance is that we we send a briefing summary to our chairman and vice chairman but also the chairman of the relevant select committee and the relevant cabinet members so it will have landed on their desk if they want to call it in as an item they obviously can do at the committee we will update them as well with the progress against the follow-up order so there is a sharing of that information across key members uh already if helpful i could share with you the summary of agreed actions from that order if that's useful i can send that through amelia so the committee can see them if that's of use that'll be fine thanks chair i'm just to follow on from helen's point this is another area of questions as well on my part because you've identified that nine million pounds spent on capital projects in education could have been potentially funded by section 106 funds so so again that's a that's a big chunk of money that we necessarily didn't need to really spend from our own our own coffers as it were um i would certainly be interested in the other findings and again if we are able to to see if that does get called into the relevant select committee because i think this could be quite interesting especially around the proposals to replace the midas system and and the controls around that and given the issues that we have been seeing with other it related systems i unit four it's up to unit four as well to see the lessons learned etc being taken account of so i think if we could do that would be great thank you that's fine any other question uh richard yeah on um education health and care needs assessment uh one one six um we've identified and agreed six actions with management um is there any chance we could have a look at those six actions please um we've had a long session with them this morning bless them but i'd be very interested going forward what you've agreed with them as their action plan i missed the beginning of the okay so so we're on partial assurance on education health and care needs assessment one one six you've identified and agreed six actions i'd be interested in uh learning what those six actions were if that's possible i think the best answer to that rather than me trying to dig them out and read them verbatim is again probably to share them via amelia okay so again you'll have visibility all of them and then i'm very happy to pick up questions at the next committee or before then if that's helpful uh super thank you uh matthew thanks for that david um i thought it was interesting the point you made around identifying a theme in 5.9 in the report about embeddedness of policies procedures given the conversation we had at the start of the meeting so my question kind of on that theme was around like risk culture and thematic reporting like do we do anything from an internal audit perspective to assess our risk culture and from that do we use that to inform the audit plan so you'll know that auditing of culture is a really difficult thing to do what we do do is what we call cultural compliance audits as the year goes by so we'll we'll with clt agreements or senior management agreement we'll identify team or a service within the directorates and do a bit of a deep dive into how managers and staff operate within that area so we'll take a menu almost of key policies or key um actions activities we think they should be compliant with and then actually just work out and go go and test are they doing what we expect them to in the way that we expect them to do it and that could be at the very sort of low level thing of testing whether expenses are reviewed and approved in time it could be looking at things like our performance conversations happening and appraisals being done because again that speaks to the culture of the organization and we can look at fairly big strategic issues like spending control requirements that's been recently imposed in our directorate services taking heed of those and then those findings can both inform clt our corporate leadership team and local management but also potentially give us suggested areas to look at elsewhere because there is a commonality of certainly frontline services as a good example a lot of the team managers have a lot of staff to manage i mean you're talking dozens and dozens of people if not more so the thoroughness by which expenses are reviewed or annual leave is signed off may be not quite as thorough as it would be the back office service where you've perhaps only got 10 staff under one manager so you know culturally you can see where certain pain points or pinch points might be likely to arise and then learn from that um it also helps inform i think the fact that we have a system where for a lot of policies hr will own the policy but the implementations the responsibilities of service managers so induction is a really good example whereby there is a very clear corporate program of what's expected within induction but whether it happens or not is very much on down to the local service manager and that will vary massively across an organization as large as ours as you may imagine so again it's trying to understand perhaps why it happens where it happens um that helps i think understand the culture behind the organization but it's a it's only a small piece to be fair there's an awful lot more to auditing culture than that uh steven uh thank you chair page 163 in the report you talk to a review or an order of liquid logic integrated finance technology lift and this this has come up previously i think it for council as well and just looking at the single view of the child program in children's services and and looking to implement a pilot scheme by liquid logic in partnership with the council it's great to enter an order to have a look at this and thank you very much for doing that and the um that's quite surprised to see that the findings from this that the even though there's a pilot system in place but it's not actually going to be supported by the vendor any longer and there are significant appeared to be significant control issues duplicate payments etc and the would it be possible to see the the the order outcomes again from similar items because there are five priority items here and would you be able to share that with order please and um possibly see if we can get this called into the relevant um select committee as well this is a key item but i think we have lessons learned from other implementations that doesn't appear that we are learning or have been learning would that be possible please i'm very happy to share that with amelia who i'm sure is making a big long list of things i need to share so yes thank you very much thanks steven do any other members of the committee have any questions queries no okay fine thank you very much and thank you very much david indeed for your update so we are asked to note that the work undertaken and the performance of internal audit in 2023 24 and the results and annual opinion of the chief internal auditor determine whether any matters that the committee wishes to consider for inclusion in the council's annual governance statement and consider whether the council's arrangement for internal audit have proved effective during 2023 24 are we all agreed on that fine thank you very much so finally on to item number 10 so this is the counter fraud annual report for 23 24 this is over to you simon i think thank you thank you very much chair um so this is our annual report it summarizes the work that we've undertaken in the year uh and when i say we we're the counter fraud team part of all this so just a very small but very important um function i should say um in terms of how we work um so we're a partnership team um so we've got a mix of uh auditors with investigations experience and investigators with audit experience um so we call ourselves frauditors um but in terms of um what we do uh david gives us a contingency from his sorry plan of 150 days and that's for a mix of reactive and proactive work uh so the report summarizes the reactive work and that's very much our investigations in response to specific allegations we then do proactive work and when we can balance the work around and that's where we might use things like data analytics to take big chunks of data look for anomalies that kind of thing um the contingency as i say was 150 days we actually used 162 uh last year so david was very generous and found an extra bit for us um that was mostly the counter fraud team but occasionally we might call on expertise technical knowledge within the sovereign teams as well so and david does also loan us auditors as well as days um in terms of the workload we had last year um so there was a slight increase 38 allegations as opposed to 33 the previous year um i don't think that's a concern um i think it's good it shows awareness within the organization um of the risk of fraud and also that we are here to to undertake that that work um it's also reflective of a trend across the organizations um obviously we can look at the fraud landscape here at surrey take learning but also take learning from the other organizations and again i think there is an increase there and partly that's awareness but i think also a slight change in the fraud landscape over over recent years um we do analysis in terms of where those um allegations come from so you can see um in the um charts at figure one um it's the areas where you kind of expect really so uh those with large populations um sorry large officer numbers so adults and children's but also maybe the corporate areas where we've got a lot of transactions going through um i do then summarize the allegations that led to investigations um so a number of these would have been reported um in the quarterly updates that the committee have received um throughout the year um we also do the proactive work is reactive as well as reactive so we undertake fraud risk assessments we do awareness training within the organization promote ourselves but also the the risk of fraud um one of the key pillars for our work is national fraud initiative so it's something that's been going on years now um it's a biennial exercise so we submit data every two years we're due to submit data in september october this year so we're very much closing down and reporting the findings from the from the last lot of data that we we went through and you can see in 3.8 there some of the summary there of the results that we had we don't just work in isolation so obviously frauds just don't respect boundaries and we work with other organizations other councils within our area um so that's within surrey but also um across the southeast as well so again we can share intelligence and but also some of the fraud fraud threats that we're all facing um and we do try to work with our boroughs and districts as well um you can see towards the end of the report there we're summarizing the the county-wide single person discount review um that's something that we set up here at county we funded it so that boroughs and districts could buy into it and it's something that is very successful um we have just set up a new contract as well so again we can repeat that and make it available to the boroughs and districts um happy to take any questions thank you very much indeed simon uh very very good comprehensive report and very well written uh i just see the blue badges is still an issue the blue badge fraud is is that going up year on year or does it stay the same i don't think it is um we are getting better oversight of that now um so obviously previously under the agent agency agreements with the boroughs and districts for on street parking enforcement it was a bit of a blind spot um you know compared to where i've worked at unitries before to london boroughs you know it's something that they're very hot on partly because they're demographic and kind of city basis it's more of a threat you know some of the rural areas in surrey it's not so much of an issue um but it's something we are working with and we're supporting blue badge team but also the the parking team so it's something we're keeping an eye on i don't think it's a a growth area but it's probably something that we can we can focus on and and you know um provide some resource to the teams to support um the new enforcement team that we we have within parking um just in terms of the single person discount and i'd see my area rygate is the highest collection increased collection for that and rygate very much pushed the exercise as well so they were they were um well they're very proactive in in fraud and certainly they're a great ally to work with um and yeah they've got some of the other boroughs and districts on board as well um so so yeah it's been successful and and that's why we've gone ahead and set it up again um the contract that we have just set up um have i've included empty hams empty homes reviews in that um you can see here obviously we fund it we get the biggest share um in terms of preset you know 75 76 that comes through to us for county so it makes a lot of sense for us to fund it um whilst the boroughs and districts have the data um it is a managed contract as well so that the provider we work with they they do all of the the work pretty much there is a slight um engagement there with the boroughs and districts to get the data um to encourage them to you know take up the offer and we have included that empty homes review where the benefit will largely sit with the borough district through the empty homes grants as well so hopefully that's an inducement that that might compel more of them to to participate really good work on that and i know stephen had a question on the single person's discount on his particular power thank you chair for that lead-in um so the question is um from the from a list of districts except the manual is not on that list um obviously i'm a borough council about do we know why they didn't participate in that and um yeah do we know why please i think the reasons for the non-participants um varied um as i say it was a managed um agreement so the supplier they handle all the contact you know um the canvassing goes through to them there is um a little bit of resource with the boroughing district um where you the the supplier will need to get hold of the data initially that might put some off in terms of resourcing but there shouldn't be a big resource commitment and like yourself i'm a twin atta i'm the head of audit and counter-fraud at elmbridge and i know it's very smooth from their perspective from their point of view and you know they're keen to participate again um we have got some of the boroughs and districts who are chasing for the the second exercise so i know it's something that has had relatively impact um we can't compel the boroughs and districts as i say we have made the empty homes available as an inducement a sweetener for them to participate but if you want to apply pressure at aptum and you'll we'd support that so maybe ask questions there sorry thank you um we we can talk offline about it steven um we do talk about it at the society of treasurer's association and we talk about every and simon attends and we encourage everybody and we we do our best because it's in the best interest of everyone and collectively we all gain from it so why wouldn't you we do our best but i can talk to you more offline sorry just to follow up on that that quickly um as as anna says you know we do talk about it sorry treasurers but not just spd we do want to work the boroughs and districts on fraud across all areas we are aware that not all of the councils do have fraud reserves resource internally so that's something we would work with them and i know rygate are very proactive and have offered them themselves and to work with some of those partners as well so we're always open to conversations and helen all right thank you thank you um that's very interesting actually and my mind my my mind was drawn to 2.8.11 about the um corruption of an an allegation that a counselor was planning to unduly influence a planning decision i'm not just a bit uh taken aback by that really i'm wondering why um it was dealt with as an internal allegation and didn't come to standards um so it's an allegation that we received we looked into it um and there wasn't a case to answer uh basically so um it was the allegation i can remember it it was uh on the basis of a overheard conversation in the pub where the counselor was saying that he's going to be np and he's sweetened this deal um and we looked at it the counselor although the the name was a counselor at surrey um he wasn't involved in planning committee here at surrey and the decision they were talking about was a burren district um planning decision and he wasn't a counselor at that burren district so it was um it basically didn't pass um any kind of risk assessment um there wasn't anything to it nevertheless it was he was a sorry county counselor did you say he was a sorry council but it wasn't a sorry council decision for planning but nevertheless it's a it's it it's something that i think mem you know democratic services would want to be it came through from the monitoring officer and perhaps ought to be brought to our member development steering group amelia because this is about training isn't it um you know members should know that these things are illegal you know and they should if they don't know then perhaps it's something that we should investigate and provide training for the the referral did come through with the monitoring officer so it did come through the appropriate routes and he asked us to to do some validation on the allegation uh and you know there was no case to answer so there's no case to answer so it was a um none of it was was it was it was all very spurious based on a conversation in a pub so yeah okay all right i think it's still uh i praised my eyebrows when i read it anyway do any other members have any comments about this part of the report no okay thank you very much indeed simon for your work so all we're recommended is to note the fraud activity completed from the 1st of april 2023 to the 31st of march 2024. i haven't been notified of any other business at all so i'd just like to thank everybody here for all your reports all the contributions of the members and especially all the officers for all your contributions all everybody attending online as well so the date of the next meeting is on the 10th of july 2024 so i would like to close the meeting therefore at 12 12 22.