Transcript

Okay, if we could make a start, please. Thank you. So, good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Audit Governance Committee on the 12th of March, 2025 at 10am in the Council Chamber at Woodhatch Place. I would like to welcome the Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources, Councillor David Lewis, who is in attendance, and officers from the Corporate Leadership Team, CLT, in attendance in person and online. There is no fire drill expected today. In the event of a fire alarm sounding, everyone present is asked to leave by the nearest exit and assemble at the top car park, reported to a member of the Building Management Team. Staff would be on hand to guide you to the nearest exit. Please ensure your mobile phones are either switched off or put on silent. In line with our guidance on the use of social media, I am happy for anyone attending today's meeting, including members of the committee, to use social media if this does not disturb the business of the meeting. Today's meeting is being webcast to the public and recording will also be available online afterwards. I would also like to mention that this meeting allows for participation by videoconference via Microsoft Teams and that some attendees are participating remotely. For those participating remotely, please note that the chat feature is disabled as it used to limit the transparency and open discussion we aim to maintain in a public meeting. For those officers who have joined the meeting remotely, please use the raise hand function to indicate that you would like to speak. And please mute your microphone and turn off your camera when not speaking. For those officers and members who have joined us in person, please may I ask anyone presenting to speak clearly and directly into their microphones. When called upon to speak, press the right hand button on your microphone and start speaking when the red light appears. Please remember to turn off your microphone when you are finished. If you are sharing a desk and microphone, then you need to press the right or left hand button depending on which side of the microphone you are sitting on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, item number one, apologies for absence and substitutions. Amelia. Thank you, Chair. So, Stephen Cooksey has sent his apologies and Paul Follows will substitute and Matthew Woods is online as our independent member. Thank you very much, Amelia. So, the minutes of the previous meeting, the 22nd of January 2025, to approve the minutes of the 2022, 2025 as a true record of the meeting. Any comments should relate only to factual accuracy. Are we all agreed that those minutes are a true record? Fine. Thank you very much, everybody. Declarations of interest. Do we have any declarations or disclosable pecuniary interests, significant personal interests or any gifts or hospitality accepted? Does any committee member have a declaration of interest in respect of any item to be considered at this meeting? Stephen, yeah. Thank you, Chair. I would just like to declare item 15, ethical standards annual review. Paragraph six talks to the members review group and I'm a member of that particular group as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. So, moving on to item number four, questions and petitions. So, we have had four member questions have been submitted by Councillor Catherine Powell. The responses have been circulated and published in a supplementary. So, Councillor Powell, I can see you're online. Can you hear us? I can hear you very well. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, question number one. You've received a written response to that question. Do you have a supplemental question at all? Yes, I do, if that's possible, Chair. Yes, I do, if that's possible, Chair. I'd like to ask the Cabinet member to provide a suitably redacted list of those incidents that have been reported to the ICO. Okay. The Cabinet member is not here. So, are you acceptable the written response for that one? Absolutely, Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much. And question number two, do you have any supplementary question for that one, please? Yes, Chair, I do. So, the anecdotal evidence from families that I've received seems to be significantly different to the zero that's been reported in the response. As the ICO states that you must record all breaches, regardless of whether or not they are notified to the ICO or individuals, and this document must include details of the breach in its effect, I would like to receive a suitably redacted copy of all recorded breaches, including those that were not reported to the ICO, just because there's such a big difference between what parents are saying and what's being reported here, if that's possible. Yes, thank you very much, Catherine. Yes, we don't have any members of the information governance team here today, but we will get you a written answer for that question, and that's being minuted. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair. And question number three, do you have a supplementary question for that one? Yes, it's really about getting a redacted list of the incidents again, please, Chair, if that's possible, offline. Yes, we've got that minuted and we will get you a written response for that one. And finally, question number four, do you have a supplementary question for that one? I do, Chair. I thank you very much for the response. However, my question is specifically asked for a review of record keeping and data protection associated with education, health and care needs assessments and education, health and care plans, whereas the response only covers an audit of the education, health and care needs assessment communications protocol. Given the issues raised by parents and carers, I really would like to request that the committee review record keeping and data protection associated with the whole education, health care needs assessment and EHCP process, including annual reviews, if that's possible, Chair. Yes, I can't see why, if the committee in agreement, I'd be quite happy for us to do a review of that, if the committee are happy with that. And I know David's here, I don't know whether you want to make any comment on that particular item, that question, David. I can't comment on the specific of what that review might look like, but we can certainly consider it for the planning. Very happy to take that under advice. Okay, thank you. Is that okay, Catherine? That's perfect. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Victor. Thank you very much, and thank you for all your questions. And thank you, officers, for the supplementary answers, for the answers as well. Okay, so moving on to public questions. We have had none, and also petitions require 14 days before the meeting. No petitions have been received. Okay, so moving on to item number five, the recommendations track and work plan. So this is to review the committee's recommendations track and work plan, and this is on pages 11 to 38 of your PACs. So just in terms of various items, so action A2024, so this is now to be marked as complete as I confirm that I've responded to the Chair of Children's Families, Lifelong Learning, and Culture Select Committee, noting that I will attend the task group regarding SEND Safety Valve Agreement. Action A3024 to be marked as complete as I confirm that CLTs in attendance at committee meetings, two audits highlighted as concerned by committee members that receive partial assurance opinions in quarter one, and in September 2024's committee are agenda items number 10, which is the tree management, and number 11, which is the social value in procurement, with the relevant executive directors in attendance. If there are any further issues resulting from any of those items, I will write formally to CLT. And finally, action A4024, once again to be marked as complete as I confirm that I've written to the Chief Exec and the Director, Customer Culture and Transformation, and the Chairs of these select committees, noting the committee's dissatisfaction with the complaints performance so far, and requesting that improvements be expedited in the service area, as the committee would like to revisit this matter within six months, and is expected to see major improvements by then. So, are committee members generally happy with that? Yes. Yes, fine. Thank you very much. Do I have any other comments by any members on the Action Track and Work Plan at all? No? No. I don't know if any officers want to comment on the Track and Work Plan? Can't see. No silence. Wonderful. So, the committee's asked to, one, monitor progress on the implementation of actions, recommendations from previous meetings in Annex A, and note the work plan at Annex B and any changes to it. Are we all agreed? We agree. Fine. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay. So, moving on to item number six. So, this is the referral of the County Council motion. So, that's item number 11A. So, the Audit and Governance Committee is asked to consider the original motion as referred by the Council at its meeting on the 4th of February, 2025. So, we do have a procedure for this. So, firstly, I'd like to invite Paul Fullows to move the motion as he's the one who raised it in the full Council meeting. You have six minutes, Paul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will endeavour not to take six minutes. Thank you very much. So, Mr. Chairman, Members, good morning and thank you for your time. As much as I stand by my position that this motion was more suited to full Council, particularly in the context of the budget discussion, I do also accept that this is also the province of audit. And it's my hope to convince you, as myself an audit manager in my day job, to outline the possible benefits of what I'm proposing. The purpose of the motion was, as neutrally as possible, to suggest potential options for strengthening the financial position of this Council by seeking independent commentary from an external source. Now, no Council is universally perfect on any subject, finance certainly so. And like many of the other members of this committee, I'm sure that you believe that continual improvement is a worthy objective for those of us who act as custodians of public services and public money. Now, in my other role as leader of Waverley Borough Council, I've interacted with both organisations that I've mentioned in the motion. Local partnerships recently provided the independent financial assessment of the Waverley and Guilford collaboration and provided analysis of future options for further work and we could do to improve efficiency and to save money. It was not an onerous process and has influenced our budget planning and forecasting this year. Solace have also provided an in-depth review of the finances and governance processes at Guilford Borough Council, who are Waverley's collaboration partner, and have provided the core of their general improvement plan, which is driving further financial savings and governance changes at that Council, and has honestly dealt with some of the governance issues that have been in that Council, particularly in the housing area. Both processes involved a light touch interaction with officers, essentially providing access to documents, undertaking some short interviews, and answering some questions if something didn't make sense. There is also usually a limited interaction with members in most cases too, and this is usually limited to cabinet members for finance and democratic, chairs of select committees, and of course the audit committee more generally through the chair. Often the governance journey for their draft and final reports involves a session audit and cabinet, and sometimes a full report to Council. We actually requested a briefing as well from members on the findings that we all found fairly useful. I think a reasonable question for you all this morning, and certainly in the light of the last month or so, is likely to be why do we need to bother with this with all the LGR work going on? And I think, to be honest, that is an absolutely fair question. And actually, I think it's particularly valid in regards to the part of my motion on solace on the governance side. And if this motion is accepted, I would certainly be suggesting that we ask Solace to focus purely on the financial, I don't think it would be worth putting a lot of time and energy into governance reviews considering where we are with LGR. However, I still think there would be significant value in some of the financial assessments and commentary taking place actually to support the LGR process, and make sure that data and accounts being fed into that process are as robust as they can be. Now, having sat through the LGR negotiations in my borough council leader hat, it is very clear how very varied it is between the 151s of the districts and boroughs in the county about how they interpret and manage accounts. And actually making sure that we have as common an understanding of the position of accounts as possible is clearly something that would make sense. I found this experience both enlightening and worrying at the same time actually. And I have to say it's certain districts and boroughs in particular, the way that they do their accounting has alarmed me somewhat. And I hope that they're considering some processes of their own. I don't have time to repeat the concerns I had about the budget in the council. I am, of course, particularly concerned about things like the reserve position and the transformation projects. But really what I'm saying here is that what I'm proposing would be minimal resource use in time. It's free in terms of direct provision from the actual providers. Really what we're doing is potentially adding some meat to LGR from the county side, which ultimately the county are dealing with most of the big services in this. So I think it's actually even more important that we look at this from the county perspective, as well as continual improvement in general. And I think just to finish off, ultimately this county is going to be running in this way for at least the sort of next 18 months to two years. I still think that considering how much public money we are managing and the scale of the services this county provides, having that kind of work, that continual improvement activity over the next two years, I don't see what the harm is, particularly when it's basically free with some light touch interaction from officers. And at that point, Mr. Chairman, I shall hand back to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul. Thank you. So now, Lance Spencer, Councillor Lance Spencer, you have the right to second the motion or reserve your right to speak at this point. I'd like to reserve my position. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, so now we are open for debate. So speaking rules, SO 70.1 and 70.2, and length of speech is SO 73. So I'd like to introduce the Cabinet Member for Finance Resources, Councillor David Lewis, and your six minutes to speak. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and good morning, members of the committee and officers. In his motion, Councillor follows, talks about the need for continual improvement and external assurance, and this suggests that there's a need to validate the information that was used to produce the 25-26 budget and future budgets. He speaks about the need for a governance review of the Council's finance and governance processes, and of our risk appetite, treasury management, capital strategy, and transformation project forecasts. But this is already how this Council operates. This Council's processes are scrutinised by the Cabinet, by this Audit and Governance Committee, and by the Resources and Performance Select Committee. We have a rigorous, independent internal audit programme, and also, of course, an external audit programme. Of course, the external auditor in Guildford expressed real concerns about the Council's finances and said there were significant weaknesses. Here, in Surrey, we're not in that situation. Ernst and Young, our new external auditors, have signed off our 23-24 Statement of Accounts and have given us an unqualified opinion. I would refer all members, and also Councillor Follows, to paragraph 5 of Agenda Item 7 of this meeting, which is, in fact, the external auditor's annual report for 23-24. If you look at that report, which will be covered later in the meeting, it says that in November 24, the Committee considered the external audit progress report, which included the draft wording of the value for money commentary. No significant weaknesses in arrangements were identified in the report for financial sustainability, governance and improving economy, efficiency and effectiveness. And these findings are, in fact, repeated, and they're included in the agenda for today in Annex 1, which is, in fact, the annual report of Ernst and Young. Does anyone honestly believe that our external auditors would have been able to reach this conclusion if they had concerns about our finance and governance processes? I would suggest they wouldn't. We also employ Arlene Close, which is an independent Treasury advisory company, to advise us on Treasury management strategy. And in 2022, we used the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, who came in and reviewed our governance arrangements. It's also worth mentioning that this Council's activities are regularly reviewed by external bodies, who would, of course, alert us to any concerns that they might have about our finance and governance processes. Last year, our adult services received a good rating from CQC. And, of course, as we meet today, our children's services are being inspected by Ofsted. Various parts of our organisation also participate in LGA peer reviews, and those processes provide further reassurance about the ways in which we operate. When I chaired this Auditors and Governance Committee, I was instrumental in the appointment of an independent, non-political member of the committee. Matthew Woods, who's online with us today, is, in fact, the second person to fulfil this role. And his presence on the committee gives me additional confidence about the thoroughness of the work that you, as a committee, do. To suggest that further review and scrutiny is needed, I find somewhat insulting to both Matthew and to the cross-party members of this committee. Finally, risk, Treasury management, capital strategy and transformation have all been covered in member development sessions over the last 12 months. And I don't, in fact, recall seeing Council followers at many of those sessions. Mr Chairman, here at Surrey County Council, our finance, governance and budget setting processes are transparent. They are robust. They are fit for purpose. They are scrutinised. They are updated. And assurance is given. And I would therefore urge you all to reject this motion. Thank you. Thank you very much, David. I just like, I don't want to repeat what David said, but, you know, I think one of the main reasons for Council Followers' motion is just because of the serious failings that have been identified at Guildford Borough Council and with their shared services with Waverley. We do not have any of these serious type of failings here at this Council. And I would just like to state that very clearly. You know, as David said, we've got very strong, experienced internal audit function. We've got very good external auditors. And they would have identified any serious failings with any of our statements. So, in addition, you know, I would just like to add that this committee does undertake deep dives into many service areas. We've never really found any serious failings with any of our services. So, once again, I would back David in saying I would therefore reject this motion as well. And with that point, I would just like to open it up now to any other Audit and Governance Committee members, if you've got any comments. Stephen. Yeah, thank you, Chair. When this motion came to full council, I made some notes which I've managed to find, which is obviously helpful. But the motion talks to continual improvement in external assurance, reviewing risk appetite, treasury management capital strategy, and good scrutiny. As has already been mentioned, I'd like to say that what's been asked for in the motion is already covered in extreme detail by our current select committees. And certainly covered by the work of the Audit and Governance Committee, which has already been mentioned. Within the papers, within full council, we had the risk management that comes to Audit and Governance. The next update is due today, March 2025. The treasury management strategy came in January 2025. And that report sets out the council's treasury management strategy, which is required to ensure compliance with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy's treasury management, and in public services code of practice specific code. 2023 audit reports and annual statement of accounts for subsidiaries. That also came. There were 11 reports there. Surrey County Council accounts, external audit report from Ernst & Young's, 50 pages. It's back again to us today. Surrey Pension Fund, external audit again from Ernst & Young, 40 pages. We move to governance and scrutiny. Audit and Governance Committee in November 2024. The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny Plan update came to this committee. And that basically showed exactly what we're doing and how transparent and open we are. I'm not clear what additional benefits could be served from the motion. Any other concerns can be raised by task and finish groups in select committees. We have a very, very active select committees, and again, that's been supported by the leader of this council to basically allow member task and finish groups to be set up. I chaired a member task and finish group in resource and performance on Unit 4. So, again, anything that does need to be raised can be done via the select committees and can be done through audit and governance. I know that the proposed service and solace is free. However, it will still need office engagement. There still will be some time, so it isn't free. I noted the benefits I don't see being additional to what's already being provided by our current governance framework. So, everything being asked for or hinted at is available. It's in documents. You just need to go find it. If you can't find it, officers will help you find it. I support the rejection of this motion. Thank you very much, Stephen. Do any other committee members have any comments? Oh, Helen. Well, it is just a comment, Chair. Because I heard, I think, my colleague Paul Fellows say that the districts and boroughs, who I understand are sovereign councils to themselves, of course, but they have very different ways around how they audit their accounts and presumably perhaps don't have the same kind of level of scrutiny that we have at county. And I just wondered why they don't have a format for, you know, audit and scrutiny in the boroughs and the districts that everybody can understand. It seems to be a bizarre thing that Guildford has been able to create this financial uncertainty without anyone being able to know about it, especially in partnership with another council. And surely the rest of the local authorities must publish their audits and risk strategies, et cetera, as suited. So just a question, why is that so, why is it, why is it that districts and boroughs don't have a similar process to ours? Okay. Thank you very much, Helen. Any other committee members at all? No. Any officers would like to comment at all? No. Everybody's shaking their heads. Okay. So, in that absence, so, Lance, you reserve the right to speak. So you have three minutes to address the committee. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have to say, when this motion came to council, I thought it was a rather uncontentious motion. It was certainly not meant to be an insult to this committee or of any of the cabinet members or the offices of this council. I do love the absolute confidence of the members of this committee that the current arrangements cover every possibility. In February 2026, this council will need to set a balanced budget for the financial year 26-27. In May 2027, unitary elections will take place to the new shadow unitary authorities. In February 2027, the Surrey County Council and the shadow unitary authorities will need to set balanced budgets for 27-28 and the medium-term financial strategy for the following five years. Underpinning all this activity will be the current financing of Surrey County Council and the 11 boroughs and districts. It is essential that incoming shadow unitary authorities have 100% confidence in the financial state of affairs they will be taking on. I have absolutely no doubt that our current 151 officer and the team have a great grasp of the current financial position. However, as you know, I am a County Councillor in Woking and just before the borough council there had to file for bankruptcy, the leader of the council confidently stated in public, whilst our borrowings are considerable, the council remains financially strong, the council has assets valued greater than the liabilities and its reserves are sufficient to manage short-term financial shocks. Now as a statement, I am absolutely sure the leader of this council would equally make about Surrey County Council's current position. This motion simply seeks a free-of-charge, light-touch analysis of the current financial position for Surrey County Council ahead of what will be the biggest upheaval in council structures and finances in the last 50 years. I would earnestly ask the members of this committee to support this motion. Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you very much indeed, Lance. And as you are the owner of the motion, Paul, you have a right to speak for three minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I do feel I just need to clarify there are no issues with Waverley. And despite similar external assurances that have been mentioned here, I commissioned reviews at Waverley anyway just to make sure that we had further assurance. And in doing so, other comments were found by those bodies that were not being picked up by, and just to comment to Helen's point, by the processes and districts and boroughs that do of course exist in regards to audit and financial management. I am slightly disappointed with the comments from Mr Lewis. I think that the Council seeking further assurance and continued improvement, particularly on finance, should not be considered by default to be insulting to officers. But I will just take this opportunity to reassure officers that no offence was meant at all, if they did indeed take any. And Mr Lewis, most of the elements that you've taken assurance from are internal, and the majority of the people who will be undertaking those internal tasks, particularly members, will not be qualified financial individuals to be making those points. But I accept that there's external council account audits and various other aspects. But I would also just flag that if you take all the councils across the UK of all tiers, including upper tiers and districts and boroughs, there have been many councils who have had clean bill of unqualified accounts who have then subsequently been found to have been in financial issues. I noticed that at least one member of this committee was definitely silent in the past in regards to, for example, Woking and various other places, which of course on paper also had robust confirmed audited external accounts, et cetera, et cetera. But there were problems. So what I'm proposing here, realistically, was just for free, with a small amount of officers' time, as I outlined, an ability to get a further check. And one of the things that these organizations do that external auditors don't do in quite that way, and let's keep in mind how backlogged the external audit process in the country is when it comes to local government accounts, and actually, in a sense, sometimes how a bit rushed they are in some of the things that they do. They also take a view on some of the things like risk appetite and the assumptions and justifications made. And I do still remain concerned about the overall reserve position of this county. And I'm certainly concerned about the longstanding ability for some of these transformation projects to deliver on the savings that some of them have been promising in some cases for years. I don't think anymore it's possible to bridge some of those transformation projects with reserves without further impacting that reserve position. And, I mean, I'm obviously onto a loser here. I completely take that point. I'm not completely insane. But I do think that we should be pursuing, particularly when the cost and impact of the council is minimal, any additional further assurance on things as serious as the county's budget. And I don't think there's any harm in asking. And I, once again, hope none of the officers here took any offence in my doing so. Thank you, Mr. Sherman. Thank you very much indeed, Paul. So, as we've got no other speakers at all, we are now going to go to a vote. So, all those members of the committee who are in favour of the motion, please, can you raise your hands? And those members who are against the motion, please raise your hands. So, the motion is not carried. Thank you very much, members. So, the Audit Governance Committee, just in terms of recommendations, is asked to consider and refer a original motion by the council on the 4th of February, 2025. And that motion has not been carried. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And just to let you know, a report noted the outcome of this meeting will be, we'll go to March's council meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to item number seven. So, this is the external audit auditor's annual report for 23-24. So, this is to share with the committee's, Ernst & Young's Auditor's annual report for 23-24, setting out a summary of the work undertaken in relation to the 23-24 financial year. So, I think this is both Janet and Nicky. And I think, Janet, you are online, I think. I'll do a very short intro and I'll hand over to Janet. Okay. Over to you, Nicky. Thank you, Chair. So, yes. As set out, we're presenting today to the committee, the external auditor's annual report for the financial year 23-24, brings together all of the work that was carried out during that year. There are two main areas to draw out in relation to this. So, firstly, the work done on the 2023-24 statement of accounts, as Councillor Lewis mentioned earlier, EY have issued an unqualified opinion on the statement of accounts, which were discussed by this committee at the November meeting and have now been signed off by the Auditor's Chair and the Section 151 published on the website prior to the government backstop date. And then, secondly, as has also just been mentioned in the previous item, the value for money conclusion. A draft of the wording was considered by this committee in November 2024. And the paper before you today just updates that wording slightly and presents the final position on that, which assesses financial sustainability arrangements, governance arrangements, and arrangements for improving economy efficiency and effectiveness, and no significant weaknesses in arrangements were identified through that work. Yeah, I'll hand over to Janet, who can talk through any other particular items to your attention today. Thank you. Over to you, Janet. Thanks, Nicky. Thanks, Chair. As Nicky has said, this is the summary of our work for the 23-24 financial year. And on page 50 and 51, we set out our responsibilities and the work that has been undertaken to complete that. So, as Nicky's noted, we've issued an unqualified opinion on the financial statements before the backstop date. We have assessed going concern within the disclosures within the accounts, which requires us to look at the position of the organisation for at least 12 months from the approval of those accounts. We've looked at consistency of information, the consistency of the pension fund information, the value for money arrangements, and the consistency of the annual governance statement. You'll note on page 51 that we have no reason to exercise our order to powers. We did receive one objection to the statement of accounts, which had no impact on our opinion that we issued, but we have yet to conclude the work on that and report out. But we expect to do that within the next month. We are also required to report into the National Audit Office on the whole of government accounts submission, but the NAO has not yet confirmed what reporting they require us to do. And so, until we've done that and concluded on the objection, we're not able to issue our certificate of completion for the audit. But that's an administrative exercise once we've done those other two elements. And that's all I was going to say. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much, Janet. Do any members of the committee have any comments? Paul? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a general question here. As part of the audit process, do you do any evaluation of, for example, the justifications behind transformation projects and their viability to deliver on the savings that they are forecasted to deliver? Do you do any analysis of any of them? Janet or Nikki? We are, shall I go? We are required to look at the arrangements in place across the three criteria of governance, financial sustainability, and the arrangements to achieve value for money. So, the three E's in terms of how you make use of information. So, we start at the high level across the organization, look at the governance structures, look at the financial reporting and budgeting approaches, and then drill down where we see projects of significance to the organization. Our code of audit practice does not require us to look into those detailed projects unless we identify a risk of significant weakness within those, which would bring a risk of financial sustainability, reputation, or damage to the organization. So, we stop at the point where we are satisfied that the arrangements are in place across the organization. So, no, we have not looked at the detailed budgeting, justification, I can't remember quite all the words you use, but we haven't felt the need to do that to be able to satisfy our responsibilities. Shall we come back, Paul? Okay, thank you. Any other committee members have any comments? I just wanted to ask one thing, just about the objection to the statement of accounts. Is it a material matter that the objective is raising, or is it a minor matter? It's to do with the arrangements in place across climate change risk assessment within investments, and we were asked if we would issue a report in the public interest. So, we have undertaken some work to consider the arrangements in place to do that, and we will be concluding our work shortly. But as I say, it had no impact on our work on the financial statements and the opinion that we have issued, nor on the conclusion of value for money. Okay, Paul, thank you. Paul, just my own clarification on that. Is that in regards to the investments of the pension fund in regards to shareholder best value versus environmental sustainability in that field? Yes, it's in that field. Thank you. Thank you. Any other committee members have any comments? Nope. Okay. So, I would just like to thank you, Janet, your team, and also Nikki and all her team for getting these accounts across the line. It's really not an easy task at all. You know, I've been on that side as well, and so just thank you very much, both of you for all your work. Thank you. So, it's basically recommended that this committee notes the report and considers any issues which we have, and it may wish to review further, which we don't particularly have any issues. So, are we all agreed? Thank you. Thank you. So, moving on to item number eight. So, this is the internal audit progress report for quarter three. So, the purpose of this progress report is to inform members of the work completed by internal audit between the 1st of October 2024 and the 31st of December 2024. The current annual audit plan for internal audit is contained within the internal audit strategy annual plan 2425, which was approved by this committee on the 13th of March 2024. And I think for this item, we're handing over to you, David. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning to you. Good morning to the committee. As you rightly say, this is our third quarter summary of completed work. 21 assignments we report in this across a number of directorates and across a number of levels of assurance, which has been the pattern pretty much for the year to date. I'm taking it as read members will absorb the contents of the report. And I think the benefit of the time is for the questions, if there are any, rather me to go through in detail. But let me just signpost you to a few things. I suspect members only has been drawn to the lower assurance opinions at the beginning of the report, as is often the case. We have three service audits in this particular report. What I would always say to you is the case again that nothing insurmountable has been identified in terms of control weakness. We've identified actions with management, with timetables and officers to address the issues that we've raised. And I'm very comfortable that we will be in a position to follow those audits up in due course, and then hopefully revisit to improve the level of assurance. Indeed, the youth offer, which is third on the list, down on page 87, we've already been invited back in by the service to start a follow-up on that. So that's good news in that regard. I'd also just flag for members, there are some good news stories further down the paper. If you turn yourself to page 92, there are two follow-up audits there for the Surrey Alliance for Excellence contracts and for health and safety governance arrangements that we had previously audited as partial assurance. Our follow-ups have now improved that level of assurance to substantial, with all the actions being addressed within the timeframes and the improvement in the controlled environment being recognised. So again, that's a good news story. It demonstrates the appetite of management to respond to audit findings and put in place improvements, which is healthy stuff. Further down, on page 95, members may have noticed, as well as a partial assurance school, we do actually have a minimal assurance school opinion, which is quite unusual. The reason for that, I can just identify for you, was primarily around a safeguarding risk that we identified during the audit, whereby a new member of staff had begun without their DBS check having been completed, but also without a risk assessment having been done before they actually started in post. So that was something we don't see very often. Although, spoiler alert, we've actually found another one in quarter four doing the same thing, so I shall be saying this next time as well. But that was enough in that particular case, along with other findings, to push that one into minimal. But again, very quick response from the school to identify that as an improvement area. The final thing I was going to flag to members was just down in our KPIs on page 98. Just again to recognise, in terms of delivery, we are now above the target. We had been amber last period for delivery against the plan. We are now at 71% against the third quarter target of 67.7%. And we are delivering the days as well, as the next indicator demonstrates. Putting my own head on the block slightly, I am confident we will exceed the 90% KPI target for year-end, come the end of quarter four. And my thanks go out to my team and colleagues across the shared service who have been doing all the work. And to management, of course, who have been helping us do all the work. But apart from that, I'm very happy to take any questions. Thank you very much indeed, David. Do any committee members have any questions? Paul. My apologies, by the way, I'm not normally a member of this committee. I am in one of my external hats, an audit manager of a large corporate. And so there are bits of this that are familiar to me and bits that aren't. First off, very pleased to see that there are lots of non-financial audits, because you sometimes come into organisations and it's all finance and there's nothing else. And obviously for an organisation like the county, incredibly important that we are doing some non-financial audits. Mr. Lewis, in his response to my motion, made it very clear that there was a significant body, though, of internal audit regarding financial matters. And could you just comment as to how far any of your side of internal audit considers anything such as, for example, transformation projects and financial risks? So to pick up the latter first, we have a comprehensive programme looking at all of what we deem to be our key financial systems. So that would cover the obvious things such as payroll, general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, control, capital programme. And we report to this committee cyclically throughout the year. And we have in previous audit reports presented our findings in respect to those financial systems, follow what work in this quarter where we have identified weaknesses in those. So that programme is ongoing and again responds to emerging risks and issues as flagged by the section 151, picked up through other intelligence where we need to do additional work. And thank you for that. And so just a couple of very short supplementaries. Do you then do any assessment of any forecasting or judgments or risk appetite from any of the budget process? I completely take that you've got a lot of audit that's undertaking the validation of controls and financial controls. I totally get that. And secondly, if possible, I mean, obviously not normally on this committee, but I assume there is a general risk register that you're deriving your audit plan from as usual audit practice. Firstly, would it be possible to have a copy of that just for my own reference going forward? Because sometimes I might be on this committee, sometimes I won't be. And secondly, how are you factoring in the local government reorganisation process into your audit plan? Because there are clearly some risks, not just financial ones, but also, for example, safeguarding and various other things that disaggregation of county services over the next two years is likely to cause. So if I could come in on the latter point, the internal audit strategy and annual audit plan is the next item on the agenda. So as part of that, we explain the process that we go through in producing the audit plan for the year. And that explains that we do draw heavily on the organisation's risk registers, both the strategic and directorate risk registers. But we also supplement that with a whole range of sources of information and intelligence and our own view of risk as part of that process. So hopefully that will explain the methodology for producing it. And the strategic risk register is available. Yeah, absolutely. The point regarding devolution of LGR, we have made the point within the strategy and plan for 25-26, that we've made provision to support the organisation in relation to those activities. But what we have said is that we're not at this stage particularly clear on exactly what activity we will carry out and how we will focus our time. But we've made provision to do that and we also keep the audit plan as flexible as we can so that we will increase that time given the level of risk to whatever level we need to. I am working closely with the heads of internal audit from a number of local authorities across the country to look at what we and others are doing in relation to LGR so that we can share best practice and draw on each other's lessons and experiences. So that work will get fleshed out as the year goes on and we will be reporting back to the committee on what we're planning to do with that time and the results of that work throughout the year. Thank you. Thank you. And David just wants to come in. Thank you. Just a follow-on from Councillor Fellow's point about LGR and the risks around that. I can talk a little bit around that in my risk paper as well in terms of there are a lot of wider risks as you mentioned. Thank you. Thank you. Are you sharing then, Stephen? Thank you very much. I just wanted to pick up about the transition of LEPs into council services. What time scales are we looking at? And it got a reasonable assurance with two actions outstanding, if you could mention what those might be. In terms of time scale, I mean, it's an ongoing process from here on, so I couldn't give you a definitive point that the service are going to be concluding. In terms of the actions, I would have to dig out the audit report and actually find them, so can I do that as a written response through Amelia? I mean, essentially what there will be would be to address the weaknesses at paragraph 1.17 on page written response if you wanted to see them. No, but I can do that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Stephen. Thanks, Chair. Just some questions on bottom of page 93, so customer transformation, test and learning methodology. Paragraph 1.45 looked at the customer transformation program started to utilize the test and learn, and this is something we covered in the resource and performance select committee and raised questions around that as well. I note that the original intent was to undertake a review of two examples of, I assume, the test and learn approach, and I would most certainly like to understand a little bit more why that has not been possible. I note that it basically says priorities have changed, but I would like to suggest that that does actually get reinstated if at all possible because the test and learn approach for that program is, I believe, quite pivotal for its success to basically manage and mitigate risks and complexity and uncertainty in that focused area. So I would just like to understand a bit more around that if I could please, David. Thank you. So from my perspective, obviously we are always willing to provide assurance to any part of the council at an appropriate moment about the activities that are undertaken. With this particular example, the timeframe that the audit had been planned to do or to be started within wasn't congruent with where the program was at that point in being auditable, if you like. So the original conversation, I think Liz is with us. Is she with us? Yes, she is. The original conversation I had with Liz at the time was about when the test and learn process was at a time towards it, that point hadn't been reached when effectively we expected it to be. So it's not to say it can't be looked at again. We have, as you know, our contingency budget within the plan to pick up emerging risks or requests for assurance throughout the year. So through our ongoing liaison with Liz and also through supporting the program doing it when we had it in the plan. Would it be fair to say that the test and learn methodology may not have been in a suitable state for you to audit, i.e. wasn't ready for you to audit at that particular point? Sorry, I'm not putting words in your mouth. I'm just trying to understand a little bit. I was actually going to say, I don't think I could say that because we have an audit today. That doesn't sound a bit chicken and egg. All I would say is, just to reiterate, if there is a benefit from internal audit reviewing those arrangements, I'm very happy to reincorporate them within the plan. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you. I'll probably make a referral into resource and performance committee on this one as well. Okay. Thank you. And Lucy, you have a question? I'm very happy to take this under review again. We essentially initiated quite early conversation with our audit colleagues because it's always valuable and important to be able to take early learning. That said, the two test and learns that we'd set out initially did take different pathways, so we didn't want to use the valuable audit resource on something that wasn't actually complete enough at that stage to be able to take forward. That said, we are now reviewing the customer program in its entirety in light of the LGR program. So it might be worth us just wrapping up a review and thinking about how that might sit in the audit program as we go forward, depending on where we end up in terms of future work in that regard. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. If I might, you mentioned that you might have some reserve credit or some scope for capacity for later on. Like maybe if we could revisit this at a future meeting to see if we can actually retask out in conjunction with Liz, et cetera, to have a look at that as and when it is suitable to do that, ready or not, as it may not be. Thank you. Thank you. Ross, you wanted to come in? Yeah, absolutely. We have contingency within the plan that we can use for that very purpose. I think it's really important also to emphasize here that one of the things that we try to do as an internal audit service is where when new developments and new activities are happening, we, and this being an example, we try to get involved early to provide advice and support on governance, risk management, internal control, as the activities are being designed and developed so that we can influence the control environment early doors. We have to do that carefully in a way that doesn't compromise our independence and our ability to audit it later. But it's a very valuable approach to internal audit that provides that real-time advice. But absolutely, that does not preclude us from subsequently putting something in the plan using the contingency time to then provide assurance that what we understood was going to be happening is actually happening as part of the audit. Okay. I think Helen, did you? Yep. So I was just going under the test and learn process. This is something that's arising quite a lot with members, I think, at the moment, particularly as we are progressing down the LGR route. And I wondered whether it might be helpful to members if we could receive some kind of process so that we ordinary people might understand. Because it's a new process, as I understand it, and I think it's important that members understand that going forward. Not just on this committee, but the wider members as well, please. Is that something possible? Liz? I'm happy to provide that rating. Wonderful. Thank you very much. David. Yeah, thanks, Chair. Just to change the subject to the schools' audits, which, you know, it is disturbing to hear about the lack of DBS checks and so on. And, you know, to have two audits, which one is minimal and one is partial assurance. When we carry out these audits, to what extent do we engage with, say, the governing body of the school rather than just with the school management team? Because ultimately, I assume the governors have responsibility for this type of thing. And it's something, you know, I just want to be certain that they are aware of the issues, the problems, and, you know, ultimately the head teacher to account. And they're the ones who would be themselves held to account if anything went wrong. You're absolutely correct. Just to be clear on the DBS point, the school did do DBS checks. It was just that particular member of the staff hadn't come with their check in place at that point in time. So it's not to say they're not being done or they're missing over a period of time. But you're absolutely right. Yes, the governing bodies are charged with the governors of the school. They receive the full audit report. We know they do because we check it in the minutes to make sure they've had it. We will engage with governors on site as well if there's a need to or they would wish to. So it is a fully participative process. It's not ring-fenced to just the head and the bursa with no other visibility. I agree with that. Ross wanted to come in. Sorry, just the other thing I would just add to that is one of the things we try to do is make sure we draw on the lessons learned from individual school audits to share for the benefit of all schools. So we produce a periodic bulletin that goes to all schools and all school governors highlighting any issues or trends that are emerging from our school activity. So hopefully it's not just the individual schools that we audit that will be benefiting from that activity. It will be all of them and that goes to governors. And I have asked in the past about this and I think it's really important with our whole audit program, whether it be the schools or other parts of audit program to look at the reports and draw out sort of common themes, common issues and so on rather than, you know, so is there anything that covers the wider councils operations or the wider school operations? I think that that's really important that we do that work. And I guess that also feeds into some of the stuff that David does on the risk side as well. Just to pick that up as well. So adding to what Russ said about the briefing, we also provide a quarterly or I think it's termly report actually back into the section one for one officer and director of education and basically pick up all the themes of those pieces of work. And just to add to your previous question, we have in the past and will be in the future become involved with briefings for both government issues. So again, it just helps with the transparency and raising the message. Thank you. Thank you. Helen, then Matty. So I just think it might be interesting for members to see the all school briefing, perhaps, whether you know at the moment, but a lot of members are governors, so I think they would be and those that are not would have schools in their divisions anyway. So be interesting to see the school briefing, please. Thank you. Matthew, you had a question. Thanks, Chair. Changing the topic a little bit to the OPLC review that was performed. So that's page 91. And I noticed the point made on section 1.31 on page 91. And my question was really a challenge around the reasonable assurance rating to internal audit. And it's really that like what's the justification for the reasonable assurance rating given that in section 1.31 we see that, you know, we found no formal agreement between the fund and the supplier to detail with requirements and responsibilities. I feel like that's quite a fundamental thing to be missed. And I'm just wondering, you know, why is it we provided a reasonable assurance rating for that review whenever we were missing something quite, in my view, fundamental? So the assurance that we're giving on the opinion there is primarily around are we in a position as a council to validate the life of overseas pensioners? Because that's the fundamental point of the process. The issue that you flagged was a weakness in as far as it's a technical issue, if you like, in the contractual management with the provider. But primarily the scope of the work is to give us assurance that we have robust procedures in place to trace and validate the overseas pensioner cohort. So that hopefully answers your question. So basically that, you know, the control environment around the process is designed appropriately seems to be operating well. However, the arrangements dictating how that process should be followed needs some housekeeping and needs to be formalized in an agreement. Is that essentially what you're saying? Exactly that is happening, but just the formalization of it requires refinement. Right. And do we know when, because my assumption would be you'd formalize that first before you do any of the work. But what's the plan to then actually have an agreement? Because I'm thinking in terms of risk, in terms of protecting us, you know, I'm not sure about the value of this process and all the additional, you know, how it impacts the risk profile. So is there a view of when we think we will have a better level of formalization in terms of an agreement? So our audit was done at a time that the contract with this provider was still being negotiated. And so basically it will all come on stream together. Again, I'd have to dip back into the audit to look at the timing of the action. But essentially, I would imagine it would be fairly quickly because we came in ahead of the contract effectively going live and the governance being formalized, if that makes sense. So I can have a quick look now and get an answer to you. No, that's fine. I understand that. So actually a factor on this is actually timing is what we're saying whenever we did the review versus so that that makes sense to me. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And Stephen. Thanks, Chair. A couple of questions on the removed or deferred audit items at the top of page 97. The financial assessment and income collection, the rationale for the addition, I think removal, should be there. But it's a key financial audit, previous years audit. And my question here is, are we skipping a year? Because I'm looking at this, and forgive me, it may well be that we've looked at 2324 accounts. And the report was given to, or came in Q1 2425. Are we basically saying that the 2425 account review, the financial assessment and income collection won't be done? Or if you can just clarify exactly what we're doing there, please, that would be helpful. Thanks. So just to clarify, these aren't cyclical audits. So there is no requirement for us to audit these areas in every financial year. So our audits are not focused necessarily on validation of transactions. They're about the control environment within that system. So we obviously have to prioritize our resource. We need to try and maintain as much coverage as we can. And so in this particular example, we've audited a system. We found the internal control environment to be very effective. And therefore, we didn't consider it was the best use of our resource to do that again within a short period of time, given that there will inevitably be other areas that would benefit from that resource. Does that make sense? Hopefully. That's really helpful. And that does help clarify that for me. So thank you for that one. The next item just on that list, the freedom to travel audit. So after discussion with management concluded that the project had not advanced as quickly as expected. So you know what my obvious question is going to be. Do we know why that hasn't been advanced as quickly as possible? Or can we explore the timeline or when that is due to actually be available for audit, please? I have a similar question to via one. Yeah, Rachel. Hi, thank you. So I'm the responsible officer for the freedom to travel. We have just about to conclude and recommend to CLT the way forward on that. Very much welcome if internal audit would like to look at that. But in the light of local government reform, what we're recommending is improvements to how we work across the council in a much better way on transport in terms of transportation. And the work that we do on that to share good practice rather than doing any changes in structure given the situation, you know, the likely process ahead for local government reform. But there has been a lot of work. We've been working all year on that. There just wasn't anything to audit until we concluded. And we're just about to take that report to CLT. Thank you for that, Rachel. I mean, a quick question off the back of that. It was when was that program actually, the freedom to travel project actually meant to have completed? We didn't have a, we're on track actually. So we set out a plan at the beginning and we took that to informal cabinet. And cabinet members have been appraised of our process throughout. We're actually on track to deliver at the time we said we would. It's just, obviously, until we've concluded and we've got the recommendations, you know, there wasn't any point having an internal audit because we haven't agreed that process yet. Okay, thank you. I just have one question about the counter-fraud, the NFI data matching. I don't know whether you can answer this, David or Russ, but do you know which areas are focusing on particularly on the NFI review? Okay, thank you. Paul. Just to comment on that last one, really. We had a similar audit at Waverborough Council and actually we found a couple of those. And when we did a little bit of digging around other authorities, that is surprisingly more prevalent than I assumed it would be and quite a lot easier to get away with than I thought it would be as well. So I'd equally be interested to see the next round of results on that. Okay. Thank you. Steve. Thank you, Chair. Just a question on the stats and the KPIs, one of the items here, outcome and degree of influence. So implementation of management actions agreed to response to audit findings. So 95% implementation for high priority agreed items in the targets, 100%. Is there anything that this committee can help internal audit with to get that into the 100% item or area? Because again, that seems to be, it's just slightly behind where we want to get to and we've got high priority items that normally are important, but high priority. And how can we actually ensure or try to ensure that those higher priority items are 100% implemented in conjunction with officers? Thanks. So with regard to that particular indicator, it's actually 100% is the actual at the moment, at the 95%. It's not one that's directly more weak and influences. So what it, what it recognises is if management are owning the actions and implementing them, the regard for audits and the value they see in the work therefore must be existing. But at this point in time, I don't think we need the committee to, to do anything specific, but we'll be obviously not shy of asking if we need it. Thank you for that. And forgive me, I should have read the top of the column. Thank you, Stephen. I just had one sort of final question. Just regarding on point 2.4, the allegation of supplier overcharging, it was historic spend and poor record keeping. Do you know how long we have to keep records for at all? Because it seems that, you know, we couldn't make any identification of what the issues were because of poor record keeping. Do you know how long we have to keep records for? I'm sure our financial colleagues will correct me if I'm wrong. I know for tax purposes, it always used to be seven years. I think the issue with the record keeping was perhaps more about the records around what work was originally commissioned and what we thought it should cost, not necessarily the bills, the invoices and the payment one or the other. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments or questions from members? No? Okay. So, recommended this committee notes the report and considers any issues or when we haven't really got any particular formal issues. So, are we all agreed to note the report? Thank you very much. And thank you very much, Dave Ross, for this report. Thank you. Thank you. So, moving on to item number nine. So, this is the internal audit strategy and annual audit plan for 25-26. So, the purpose of this report is to present the internal audit strategy and annual internal audit plan for 25-26 to the committee. So, underpinning the work of the internal audit service in delivering the annual internal audit plan are the key principles and objectives that are set out in the internal audit strategy and charter. These are presented alongside the annual internal audit plan for 25-26 as good practice dictates and these should be updated and reviewed on an annual basis. And I think this is over to you, Russ. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, this strategy and plan follows a similar format to what we presented to the committee in previous years. The strategy itself sets out how we go about delivering our assurance and how we go about producing our audit plan of work. And that includes the sources of information that we draw upon to produce the plan itself. Having said that, we recognize that the risk profile and the risk environment of the organization is changing rapidly and constantly. And for that reason, we build a large proportion of time into the plan for both contingency and what we call emerging risks so that we're able to respond to those risks as they emerge during the course of the year. The work that we have planned to deliver is not set in stone. And quite rightly, it is subject to review and amendment during the course of the year, all of which will be reported back to this committee. The work is matched to available resources and members will see on page 104 that we continue to plan on the basis of 1,817 audit days per year, along with an additional 225 days that supports the audit of schools activity. The appended to the strategy is the detailed plan of work. And as you'll see that in each case, we've tried to provide a rationale for inclusion and the high-level objective for those pieces of work. All of that will get scoped out in much more detail at the point we commence the activities. A large proportion of the work quite rightly relates to key financial system activity and not least on the back of MySurrey implementation. And so we will, in addition to that, we will continue to work alongside the organization to support improvement activities in relation to MySurrey. But we have also included, as we discussed earlier, a proportion of time for local government reorganization, which at the moment is, again, as we discussed earlier, is an unknown. But we are very prepared to scope and to flex the audit plan to spend whatever amount of time is necessary, given the level of risk that is likely to be attached to that. So there is a possibility that there will be some quite significant changes to the plan in the latter part of the year, depending on the timescale and the level of that change. In addition, you'll see that we have included, as Appendix B, the internal audit charter, which is something we are required to provide under professional standards. But as I've highlighted in the covering report, the previous public sector internal audit standards are being replaced with effect from 1st of April with a new set of global internal audit standards. We are in the process, and we have just completed our self-assessment against those standards, and they are going to result in some updates to this charter and to some other documentation, which we will be bringing back to this committee during the course of the year. But subject to that initial self-assessment, we are confident that we remain in conformance with those new global standards, subject to just coming back and obtaining approval from the committee. Very happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ross. Any members of the committee have any questions? Oh, sorry, Matthew. I see. Thanks for that. I've got two questions, if I may. The first, and I appreciate we've already had some discussion around this earlier on around the reorganisation, and I can see in Section 2.6 with the strategy, which is quite robust, actually. So at Section 2.6 of Appendix A that you mentioned about the risks of the future devolution of local government, and I understand, you know, it's a sort of watching brief on that. But I would be interested today whether internal audit has a view currently of how the current control environment would stack up and respond to the potential changes. Yeah, I'd be interested whether or not they think that our control environment is robust enough to be flexible and respond to any structural changes that we may have because of any reorganisation. Very interesting question. Yeah, thank you. I think it's fair to say that the organisation is very alert to the potential impact of local government reorganisation. And it's clear from my interactions with the organisation that planning is already taking place for the potential implications associated with that. I would suggest, as you know, I work with other local authorities. And from what I've seen so far, in terms of that planning, it's fair to say that Surrey is probably ahead in that sense. And I'm seeing clear evidence that it is being prioritised, the right people are involved, the right thinking is taking place. What, from an internal audit perspective, one of the things that I will be doing is holding some workshops with my colleagues and David's opposite numbers from the other authorities to start to work up what we think the risks will be from a governance, risk, internal control perspective. And we will be feeding that into the organisational plans to support that, as well as working with the services within the organisation to potentially start to work on some facilitation of risk workshops for individual services so that they can understand and appreciate the potential implications for them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that makes sense. I did have one other question, if that's okay. It's a bit of a change. It's more in line with the risk sort of planning process on page 108. We talked about, you know, the various other pieces of information that we use to, you know, inform our risk, or sorry, our internal audit plan. And the question was really, do we have an assurance map that we use at the council to, you know, document it? You know, document and identify all the various resources and pieces of internal and external assurance that we use? So, assurance mapping in local government is not great, and it's probably not as advanced as it is elsewhere. And I know that from interaction with my heads of audit colleagues. In the purest term, an assurance map is something that should be maintained by management. And it should be their document that is updated and owned. In reality, I've not seen many examples of where that actually happens. There's the risk registers, obviously, but actually a complete assurance map doesn't exist. But what we've tried to do within my service is to supplement our planning and to supplement the risk register with a very high-level assurance map of our own, based around the organization's strategic risk. So, we maintain something to try to identify and pull together those different sources of assurance, be they internal or external. But there isn't a formal organizational-wide management-owned assurance map. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Victor. Are you sure? Thank you very much, Chair. I don't know. I don't know whether this comes under assurance mapping, but I was just kind of querying. I mean, any review that has had a minimum or, say, a partial assurance, what is the follow-up review process to assess the implementation of any kind of management action that we may have put forward or that you may have put forward? Okay. So, firstly, any individual actions that we rate as high priority, high risk, are subject to action tracking by my service, and you will see that we have a performance indicator against that. So, in every case, we write to the action owner when that action becomes due, asking them to confirm in writing that they have implemented that action, and we report on that as a KPI to this committee. Any opinions that are partial or minimal assurance will automatically trigger a follow-up by my service. So, what we normally do is work from the due date for the completion of the actions. So, once we reach that due date, we will go back to the service and we will conduct a follow-up and confirm through our own testing that the actions have been identified, and we provide a revised audit opinion for each of those areas. And you will see both within the quarter three progress report reference to follow-up audits that we've undertaken, and you'll see within the detailed audit plan for next year where we're planning to undertake follow-ups for areas that previously received partial assurance. All of that gets reported back to this committee. Thank you, Chair. It's just a follow-up question, I think, from where Matthew was in 2.6, looking at the LGR thinking, and it's good to hear that you're working up the risks with others and looking at risk workshops, etc. There's currently, what, one, eight, one, seven days of audit time available. I just wonder if you've actually looked at any additional resource that you are going to need to basically to get in and whether there's any proactive steps to do that, because getting resource in and getting them trained up takes time. And suddenly you don't want to be kind of back in the year and suddenly realize you need two additional resources, whether that's being thought about or whether that's in plan or there's contingency there that you could actually utilize. So resourcing the service is a challenge in terms of experience, qualified internal auditors nationally is a challenge. So at the moment we're focusing on developing a pipeline of growing our own effectively, and we're investing very heavily in training for that reason. In terms of our ability to flex, we obviously operate within a finite budget like any other service, and so we have to prioritize within that. Having said that, I think if the level of risk escalated to a point where the organization really required more assurance over and above that, I'm sure that we would be able to make that case to be going back and arguing that the benefit was there. What we do on an operational basis is we have a number of contractors that we have used, that we have experience of individuals who are very good, and we use those to help supplement our own internal resource and manage peaks and troughs in workload over the course of the year. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm just keen to get some form of insight into what that might look at later on because, again, I know it's a crystal ball situation, isn't it? Chicken and egg. It's noted that it does take time to get people on board, and you can use contractors and so forth. But at some point, you will have a better view on what those LGR risks are to this organization and to others, and whether or not there will be or could be a requirement for additional resource to support that activity without dropping BAU activities that's currently in the plan. Because that's what will happen, isn't it? Some stuff that we've got will be deprioritized. I'm just trying to basically head that off and say, well, how do we keep the lights on, as it were, and keep everything going as we should, BAU activities, and not saying it would be compromised, but, again, how to proactively address that, and how do we do that, or how do we get early sight of that? Well, I think that the issue of what the detailed scope of the LGR work is likely to be is going to be difficult to predict at this stage. But what we do know is that there are, from a governance and risk and internal control perspective, there are key activities of the council that are going to be affected, particularly in terms of individual services. And one of the things that we're going to be particularly keen to help ensure is that the internal control environment in relation to those, the activities of those services remain in place. So that would include finance, HR, IT, for example. So certainly that's going to be one of the focus areas for us. My role, and David's role, is going to be to look to ensure that we've got the resource and the capacity to support that. And where we don't think that's the case, that will obviously be a conversation that I'll be having with Andy as Section 151 officer around, you know, whether we need additional resource and how we will manage that. So that would be the next port of call would be the conversation with Andy. Andy, you want us to come in? Yeah. I mean, it's a key question, isn't it? Because not only is that faced with the internal audit plan, it's faced with all of our business as usual activities as well. In, when Russell's drafting this plan, that paragraph in 2.6 practically reflects the conversation that we had, that in the later part of this year, it's going to change significantly. I think, as per the questions really, it's going to be, have to be one kept on watch by this committee, because there'll be budget constraints. And if you're interested to play that out, I might be saying, well, to internal audit, well, we'll have to reprioritize the plan. You as a committee might not be comfortable with that and might get the questions around the additional capacity. There will be, without doubt, the questions that are faced across all of the service provision in terms of BAU and LGR. The other thing I would add is that there will be things that will therefore fall away effectively in terms of activity that therefore can be deprioritized, because we won't be necessarily looking at that from an audit plan perspective. I don't know what they are, but that's where we need to be agile. Hopefully, we'll have a clear steer from government and get some clarity around standing orders and decisions that will enable governance to be created. And there'll be a review of how effective that governance is without doubt. And therefore, that's where you can see internal audit coming into play. But equally, then when the work streams are enacted in terms of inevitably what they'll be around finance IT, it's getting assurance that those are fit for purpose across the Surrey footprint as well. And let's not forget about this. It's not just the county. There are 11 districts and boroughs that will also be impacted by this and how that can come to a point. to a commonality around how audit and governance committees across the piece look at it. So, this will, I think everyone wishes for a crystal ball at this stage, but we'll undoubtedly have to return back to this one when we get that further clarity. Thank you, Chair. Thank you both for the comments and feedback. On that item of basically we have to come back and review it, could we maybe add an item onto our action list or our tracker to basically come back and look at this next committee just to say, has there been any additional work that's completed on the risk workshops and what may be the art of the possible or the ask for resourcing for the back end of that. So, if we can just come back and revisit that, ask that question and see what that crystal ball is predicting at that particular point. Is that okay? I'm very happy if other members of the committee are happy with that. I think that's right. And I think a standard agenda item on this actually as we go forward actually. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah, very much. And I think we've got that many too, Amelia. Okay. No other comments from members? Okay. So, we as a committee are asked to consider the contents of the report and appendices and to approve the following. So, that's one, the internal audit strategy in Annex A, the internal audit corporate fraud plan, Appendix A, and the internal audit charter, Appendix B. Are we all agreed? We agree. Okay, fine. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I was now going to suggest a quick comfort break for about 10 minutes. We'd be going for an hour and a half. So, yep. So, and we've still got quite a few items. So, if everybody's in agreement with that, 10 minutes? Wonderful. Thank you very much. Okay. I think we're ready to start again. Thank you all very much. So, item number 10 is the tree management update report. So, this will provide an update to the committee in relation to progress against the outstanding actions from the tree management internal audit report completed in February 23 and the follow-up review in April 24. I think this is either Simon or Katie. Yeah. Morning. Thank you very much. Morning. Thank you very much. Morning. I'll be Simon Crowther, Executive Director for Environment, Property and Growth. So, I'll kick off if I may. Yeah. So, there's been, I suppose, a little bit of history, as the paper said, in terms of our audit colleagues looking at the risks around tree management. They came and did the first audit in February 23, followed up by April 24, and the timing is against us. I think they've also just done one which remains in draft in February 25. The issue we had was partial insurance was sustained for over 12 months. There was one meeting priority and two high priority actions that were still outstanding. If I go in reverse order, the medium priority action was regarding getting the policies updated for the Basingstoke Canal. That was delayed primarily because we were restructuring the governance for the Canal of Basingstoke Canal Authority. That action has now been addressed and is approved in October 24. And then the two high priority actions, one regarded the reporting processes that we had in place for elevating or escalating information associated with tree risk management. That has now also been tackled and perhaps Katie can add a bit more detail on that. And then the other one was being clear about whether there are any residual risks for the trees that are present on academy school sites. And colleagues, Katie, again can elaborate on the detail, but read all over 160 leases to check on the clauses that were in those leases. There is a catch-all lease, which basically ensures that the tenant and our academy structure addresses the health and safety risks. So we firmly believe that that also includes the risks associated with trees. So in our mind, those three risks have now, sorry, those three actions have now been addressed. The two high risk ones regarding the residual risks and leases, the reporting point and the policy update for Basingstoke Canal. Thank you. Thank you very much, Simon. Do any members of the committee have any questions? Stephen. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Paragraph three in the tree risk management report, sorry, paragraph four talks to the internal audit report concluded the functionality of the current tree management system. Carbon tech lacks high-level reporting. A delay in paragraph five talks to a delay was incurred while a new confirmed reporting system was implemented and evaluated. And it then basically concluded that carbon tech remained the optimal system. I was confused. Did we spend time and money implementing a new reporting system only to basically conclude that the original system was actually fit for purpose? Can you clarify, please, what happened there? Yes, of course. I'm happy to take that question. Carbon tech is a system which holds all the data that we have on our trees. The problem that we have is taking all of that data and putting it into a – or downloading it into a system that enables us to provide a – what we would call a dashboard, really, of all of that – a summary of that information and give us an idea of what the risks are outstanding. Carbon tech doesn't do that. Carbon tech doesn't do that as a piece of software. So, knowing that the confirmed reporting system was coming into place, we looked to see whether we would be able to do that within the confirmed system. It was decided, actually, that once we'd got to that point, the amount of data that we hold in carbon tech is really detailed and we didn't want to lose that. And we would lose some of that if we moved it all into confirmed. So, the decision was made, actually, rather than us moving data around or incurring any further costs, that what we would do was to use a dashboard which employs what are called APIs to draw that data from the piece of software and putting it into – put it into a dashboard. It does provide us with the information that we need. It does provide us with the information that we need. There is some data sorting and data for the dashboard. But it does give us the process that we need. And I would say there isn't further – there isn't any additional expenditure that's been incurred throughout that process because confirm was being taken on to manage to – but whether it would be more effective. Thank you. All right. Okay. Thank you for that. APIs, application programming interface, way of connecting system to system for members that may not get that. For the – so, clarification here that carbon tech and the confirm – so, we have two systems now running, yes? And you basically – is data still being updated in carbon tech or is that just basically a static repository now of data? And that – because you said that you don't want to lose all of that data on trees. Is that being updated ongoing in BAU? And also, we're using a confirm reporting system as well. So, we've got two systems now instead of one. So, I'm sorry. I probably haven't been very clear on that. So, the carbon tech system is what we use to report and manage our tree assets. And the confirm system was a system that highways took on to be able to manage highways assets. Highways also use carbon tech for their trees. And we were looking at whether we could move all the data that was in both carbon tech systems into confirm. But if we were to do that, we would lose the level of detail that we already have in carbon tech. So, it was decided to continue with the carbon tech system in both highways and in LMP. We do have – they are different systems and they do – they are able to do different things. But confirm is not as detailed as carbon tech. So, our – all of our tree inspectors continue to use carbon tech. And that is our – keep all of our asset information up to date. Okay. Thank you very much for our clarification. I'm not going to drill any more because if I do, we'll start to drill into why we've got two instances, two separate instances of the same system. Why can't we basically consolidate those? Have one or, God forbid, we have one system that provides a functionality for confirm and carbon tech. But I'm not going to go there for this. This is outside the scope. But thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Helen. Thank you, Chair. I'm just to – just to – just for a clarification. This – you know, I remember when the County Council adopted a tree policy. I think it was following a serious fatal accident in a school in Ashton, I think, in Surrey. And I just want to – just to clarify that this system is to make sure that all trees, basically, within the public realm, including schools and academies, are inspected and that those at risk are dealt with. And I just think, you know, for – because we've gone straight into the technical system and the report doesn't really describe the reason why we have this process in the first place. And I think that would be really helpful if we did. So that's – we know – so we can reassure the public and members so that we have a full account of trees within the public realm that might put – So what the audit was able to do was to verify that all tree risk is covered across different – across the areas that my team is responsible for. And that includes schools. It includes operational properties that LMP, land and property look after. So that includes libraries, fire stations, etc. We also look after all of the countryside sites and the tree risk there. The areas that we don't – that my team are not responsible for is highways. But highway same policy with a slightly different practice note. But we coordinate across the two departments to make sure that we have – we're also come back on the comment that was made about why we would have two different versions of Carlton Tech. And we are moving those two things together as part of our joint working together. So – and that, Emily. Great, Laisha. Thank you very much, Chair. Just picking up on Helen's point. So in the report it says that health and safety risks from trees is not specifically referred to in most leases. Is that because the onus is on the landlord or where the tree is? Is the onus on them rather than the county council in terms of health and safety? Is that clear? Is that clear? Thank you. So, yeah, within the lease – so when a school academizes, it enters into a 125-year lease back to the authority. As part of that, one of the terms in that lease agreement is a kind of catch-all phrase. It doesn't specify the task for health and safety is transferred to the occupier, so the academy trust. So by implication, it includes everything and therefore includes the trees as well, even though it's not going to spelt out in that. Thanks, Laisha. Just before I come to Stephen, just a question on the table on page 138. There's a couple of outliers on the number of inspections that were behind by. Is there any reason why, sort of, there's two districts which seem to be far more behind than the others? Thank you. Yes, inspectors try and get across everybody else's work. They haven't been able to do all of it, but we will be engaging. We've already gone out to recruitment for the post. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Steve? Thank you, Chair. I promise this is the last one. Our officers are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Item, or paragraph nine, review of school leases. So what I wanted to kind of get some clarity on is the item talks to a review of all academy leases to identify risk continued to sit. And the legal team, they need to request all 165 leases from storage. Paragraph 10 then talks to a little bit around, it appears there's been a little bit of re-scoping of that work. So the first question would be, have all of the 165 leases been requested from storage? Have they been reviewed? And have the legal team completed that work? My real concern about this is part of the recommendation for this committee being looked at at the moment is on recommendation two, that the committee is being asked to acknowledge the legal discharge of all legal abilities. So I'm a little bit, I just want to make sure we've got that covered off and it's all been done before this committee is asked to do something, but we're not sure if we actually can do that or not. So if you might be able to help me with that, please. Yes, of course. I'm happy to help with that one. The 165 leases were all requested from storage. They were all reviewed by a legal representative from the council. I read through 47 or 45 of them to check them. And what's actually been quite helpful in this process is that as legal reviewed them, they digitized them. So we now have access to all of those online and we won't need to be from storage again. I think just on the second question as well. So our view is that the risk pertaining to tree management is transferred under the economy situation, but we are doing a further review. So Belt and Brace's review is legal on that point. So hence the kind of point in any other committee members for any questions. I can't see anything. Okay, so we are recommended that the committee note that the outstanding actions in the tree risk management internal audit for the service are now complete. And secondly, the committee acknowledged the legal discharge of all legal abilities in relation to tree risk management to academy schools via lease clauses could depend on individual circumstances and whether the council has acted reasonably. Are we agreed? Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah, sure. Sure, David. Yeah. Just to add a little bit from an audit perspective. So we have actually now finished the follow up word to independently validate. So we'll be publishing a report imminently with a substantial assurance opinion on that. So you may notice in the audit plan in the follow up section, it still says tree management. Well, rest assured we won't be doing that again. Right. Because we are now happy it's all been completed as updated. Okay, wonderful. Thanks for that clarification. Thanks, David. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Moving on to item number 11. So this is report on progress against actions in the internal audit social value in procurement follow up report. So to provide an update on the actions being undertaken regarding the original and follow up audit reports on social value in procurement. And I don't know who's taking this up. Rachel, over to you. Thank you, chair. I'll introduce it and then Darren will be able to pick up any details on that. So yes, there was a follow up audit in May 24. And following that follow up audit, I was asked by the chief exec at the time to set up a steering group to improve social value across the council. So we've been meeting as a steering group since then. We've got an action plan in place and we focus on two bits. One is our social value principles and an action plan around that and covering the marketplace. And you'll see some reference to that through the recommendations and the work that we've been doing. So there's an improvement plan in place for all of that and we're on track with that. There's also part of the action plan is also around contract management. And again, the report that you see in front of you picks up that. So Darren will be able to take you through the specifics of addressing the recommendations from the last follow up audit. And then internal audit will be coming again to audit social value and those recommendations in a further follow up audit in 2526. Thank you very much. Over to you, Darren. Thanks, Chair. Thank you, Rachel. So to give a bit of background, social value within procurement is always sat in two sides of it. There's the advisory side, which is where our procurement team and our policy team advise services on how to embed social value within their contracts. And then we build that in as part of the contracting process. And then services themselves were always responsible for managing contracts and therefore social value delivery is part of that. One of the number of things that came out of this audit was that we needed to look, I think, at three key areas. One was around system data to make sure we had a golden thread that flowed through from the procurement management systems through into our tendering systems. And then ultimately now into our contract management reporting systems. So we can actually track social values committed and then assuring ourselves that it's been delivered. The second part was around social value delivery itself. So we are taking within procurement and contract management a much more what I'd call interventions approach now to assure ourselves that the contract management, sorry, the social value that's committed within our tenders is actually being delivered over the life of that tender. We focused initially on the top 75 contracts and that generated some very interesting information around the timing of the social value delivery over the life of that contract. And actually making sure that contract managers have the skills necessarily to manage those social value requirements such as setting out social value delivery plans and the like. And we are now extending that across the remainder of our contracts as well over the life, over the next sort of six months or so. And then the last part was around published guidance and the governance. So as Rachel mentioned, the social value steering group and working groups have been driving a lot of this forward. It's also worth noting that the procurement act 2023 went live on the 24th of February. And alongside that was the new national procurement policy statement, which is contains a lot of the information around social value delivery and how we need to be targeting and focusing our social value. So it's only been three weeks since that guidance was published. Most of it was in line with what we were anticipating, but we are currently revising our guidance and revising the governance processes around that to make sure we're compliant with the new national legislation that came in only a few weeks ago. So everything's on track with what we are outlined within the reports. And as Rachel mentioned, the internal order will be coming back to review later on in the year. A national procurement policy statement has been published and we can now make sure we are compliant. Okay. Thanks very much indeed, Darren. Before I just had one couple of questions, just on the table on page 142, the target implementation date. So the relevant staff training, that's all being completed now, October 24, so we can tick that off. And similarly with the next on social value delivery, September 24 and ongoing. What's the ongoing bit? That is, we set up the processes so the systems are now in place. As I said, we focused on the top 75 contracts by social value and we're ongoing because we're now extending that across the remainder of our contracts. But it will also, in some senses, the system is there, but it could always be ongoing because obviously we're letting contracts all the time. So it's a continual process. Thank you. Fine. Thank you. And just the government's published guidance. The no new policy required September 24, new policy required April as you mentioned, 25. Thank you. Any questions from any committee members on this? Stephen. Of course I've got questions. On the table on page 142, the system data. So we've had some discussion around the practice system and my sorry slash unit for within resource and performance committee. And forgive me, but that particular system data aspect. It appears that that is a manual work around where they're basically putting contract numbers from practice into my sorry manually. It states it there. And why are we doing it manually? Why can't we basically make sure that's that's done systematically? Because that's going to introduce errors into the system and data quality and a whole load of other stuff, which in some law that will no doubt pick up at some point in the future. But can we talk about that a little bit, please? I can see some heads being shaken. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Ann Epsom, head of policy and operations within procurement and the policy team reporting to me. It's exchange if you like or the data input is actually from an internal procurement team pipeline and workflow management piece of software into the practice system. So it's not between practice and unit four. There's not a failure of any kind of data transfer or a manual work around that should be because unfortunately it's called a PM3 software. It tracks our pipeline and it tracks progress against delivering those procurement projects. It's essentially in other aspects about that procurement that are useful from a procurement perspective. So yes, unfortunately that is a requirement to manually take that unique identifier number and put it in when you then proceed to use practice to run the tender and or issue the contract. There is no API potential between those two systems, unfortunately. Okay, thank you. The mention was made around the top 75 by social value contracts. Again, one of the large contracts that we have, I believe, within the council would be Ringway, for example. Would it be possible to get a list of those top 75 by social value and also the social value delivery from, say, that Ringway contract about what we were hoping it would deliver and what's actually been delivered? Are there targets in there about basically what we would like and what's actually been delivered? And if it's possible to have that information shared or if it is available, if we can get a pointer to where it is, please, that would be helpful. Yes, happy to share that information. Thank you. Matthew had a question. Yeah, thank you. Just, it's quite a direct question actually, but how do we ensure that the process for measuring social value doesn't just turn into a box ticking exercise? So, that's a very good question. So, part of the contract, so there's a number of stages to where we need to get to with social value. So, first of all, it's about how we determine and target the level of social value that we want and where we want that social value to be delivered or how we want it to be delivered. So, it's a combination of between what the supplier offers as part of their contracting process, but also the work we're doing around the community marketplace, which we'll be looking to launch very shortly, which was a rebrand of the social value marketplace. Where we are, as a counselor, to put on requests that come in from the communities and from residents and from anywhere across the organization in the region of where they may want to target social value. So, the first thing is about assuring that the social value that we have that is contracted is relevant and suitable to where we want to go. What we then need to do is, as the contracts get awarded, we then develop social value delivery plans against those to ensure that our suppliers are actually delivering what we require or what has been offered within that social value, whether that's everything from, you know, it could be offering up spare capacity to develop skills for individuals, it could be providing like in the ring way service, it could be providing engineering support, it could be applying apprentices, it could be a whole range of things that they offer as part of that. We then, through the reporting mechanisms we have in place, which we piloted with the top 75, we now do regular surveys against those delivery plans to ensure that suppliers are actually delivering what they've said that they will deliver and against those timeframes. And that's something we want to then improve on further. So, in terms of measuring, we use the government TOMS, which is the government published metrics around how we sometimes assign values to those social value requirements. So, it's a mixture of a number of different initiatives. But the key thing is that we meet with the suppliers on a regular basis against that delivery plan to ensure that our social value has been delivered, rather than, as you said, the danger, which could be a tick box exercise that says, yes, I have delivered it, I am self-certifying that I have delivered it. We are moving, that's why I mentioned right at the beginning, to that more interventionist approach. Okay, that makes sense. So, we have designed mechanisms in order to demonstrate that the social value is actually being given, essentially. Yes, and the governance around that and the timeframes around, I suppose the frequency of those reviews is proportionate to the value, size and complexity of the contract. And we also apply a sort of a bit of a risk layer to it as well. So, if, for example, the supplier is not delivering, but maybe have a low value, low complexity, but they are not delivering, for example, that would kick it through a risk mechanism into a higher level of governance checking around to ensure those contracts are actually delivering, both from a service perspective and a social value perspective. Will we use that information to then inform any future contracting processes then? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. Helen? I think it would be interesting to know what the top 75 contracts were. But that's maybe, I don't know whether that's confidential. And also, it might be interesting for other scrutiny committees to, including ourselves, maybe to look at whether those are being delivered. The social contract is being delivered. And I'm not sure whether, you know, member scrutiny is appropriate, but if there has been an agreement for social value in a local area that's outside of the norm or something. Yeah. I mean, that's not what your report's about. I understand that. But, you know, I'm just thinking, oh, this sounds very interesting. And how do we know that it's actually being delivered? Sorry. One of the things we are building as part of this, and this all links to our contract management approach, which is why we're integrating a revised approach to how we do, or how we assure ourselves that contracts are being managed, which then in turn leads to social value delivery. So we are building a whole set of performance metrics and everything, which will get reported up and through. So, you know, there's nothing particularly confidential in that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And finally. Finally. It follows on from Helen's point and from Matthew's point around social value. I mean, it's an area that I've not really heard of, to be perfectly frank. So I think it might be quite helpful if we do have some form of briefing note or if we can get that done and maybe even factor it into a member briefing session. And looking at the top 75, because I know, for example, highways is a hot topic for most members and offices as well. You know, pothole filling and quality of work and all of that kind of good stuff. So I'm sure that would be of great interest to basically have a look about social value metric and then probably open up a bit of kind of worms, I'm afraid. But if the information is there and we can share that, then if we can get some information on it, it would be really helpful, I think. Okay. We might be pleasantly surprised. We might be. Okay, I think we'll move this one on if there's no other questions or issues. So we are, the Order Governance Committee notes the update against the actions containing social value and procurement. Are we agreed? Thank you very much. Okay, so moving on to risk management. And so we are just providing, going to be, have an update on risk management. This is with David. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So this is to provide the committee with an update on what's been happening over the last months around risk management to give you some assurance. I kick off the paper, first of all, by talking about some reorganizations where effectively risks were rejigged. Not they were new risks, but they just needed to reflect the changes within the organizational structure. That's really important because the risks need to reflect the organizational structure. So there's clear lines of reporting, responsibility and accountability, actually. Aside from that, also we had some new joiners, certainly at the executive level. So it's important that those executives have a clear understanding of how risk management works. And also they're setting the tone for the organization, so making sure that that's all in place. So I just wanted to call that one out to begin with. The other one, the big news, of course, is around local government reorganization. And I said I'd give a verbal update of this committee because it was hot off the press when I wrote this paper. And subsequent to the announcement that Surrey's going to be part of the first wave in local government reorganization to unlock devolution, I've met with CLT twice now to discuss LGR in particular. And we've agreed that LGR would be the top risk now within our corporate risk register. I'm always at pains to say when I say that, you know, the risk isn't around LGR. The risk is around actually there's going to be a huge amount of change associated with LGR. So with change there is always risk, so it's reflecting that. And the risk that we've got at the moment within the corporate risk register, and apologies it's not within your papers but these got released before it was finalized, is all around actually, you know, the decisions made by central government are going to impact the services in a different way. So it's just understanding that there's a high degree of change but we're not quite sure what those are at the moment. So we've got something at the corporate level. I've started to engage with the directorates to think about what does it mean for services. And I'm working very much with the risk leads to think more of a focus on the short term actually at the moment. And I can talk to a couple of the risks around those. But making sure that those conversations are starting to happen at the moment and thinking through that. We've also got a project LGR risk register now as we start to ramp up the project. And we've got a risk lead now associated with that as well. So making sure that those things are in place. The bit that is missing at the moment is how we're going to connect up with the governance. So as the governance structures align around LGR then obviously risk will be a big part into feeding into those governance structures. So as they start to form then obviously we'll need to pump prime those and make sure that people are getting the right information there. So early days but we can start to do some things around risk within that space. We don't just have to wait for central governments decisions there. So that's the big thing on LGR. A couple of other things are happening. We had the CQC assessment last year. They looked at risk as well. We've got a clean bill of health there. So that was pleasing. Risk is still going to CLT every single month. So they're getting visibility of the risk. So that's very much factored in their decision making. And we'll bring up things as they arise. Risks are going to ICAB and continue to do so. So there's one actually going later this month. We'll be talking about that. So I think the picture's there. The other part which I just mentioned maybe at my last session with the Order and Governance Committee is I'm continuing to engage with counsellors from other organisations. Sorry, from my counterparts in other organisations. So that if there are any best practice then I can start to pick up on that. And that's going to help me a lot actually when it comes to LGR actually. And just to get some different views on that and how things are happening. I would say that I'm still getting approached by a number of organisations because they're hearing good things so that's always pleasing. Sometimes they're referrals and sometimes it's through people leaving this organisation seeing how risk is done in other places and saying actually I've seen it done in a different way which has been helpful. So I'm always happy to provide some support there. So LGR I think in summary is going to be really challenging from a risk perspective. The more you think about LGR the more risks are emerging actually. And one of the things that I was just sort of starting to think about even in the car over here in terms of how do we sort of make sure the risk is properly geared to all of these changes is you know it's not creating a real central piece I don't think around risk. The resources need to be within those services and thinking about where risks are and what are we doing about that. And then making sure those correct risks are flowing up to the organisation so they can be fed to the right areas. That's going to be an interesting thing that's going to have to happen over the next period of time. So I'll stop there and I'll invite any questions not looking at anyone in particular. Thanks very much indeed David. Just looking on the table on page 152 strategic risk 08 there's risk that SEC were unable to meet the increasing level of demand for child and family services. That's gone down. That's not sort of the opposite to what I would expect. So the post-COVID demand was extremely high and certainly when I spoke with the team their view is over the last six months actually demand is not maintaining that. Demand is starting to reduce at the moment. So their view is actually it's not where it was post-COVID and so for absolutely let's keep it on the risk register but it's not quite as high as it was before. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. Helen and then Aisha. Thank you very much David. It's really important this. We're all starting to think about LGR and it's also happening really really fast isn't it. I think the briefing that we had on Monday we were told that the costs of implementing LGR I think were 35 million pounds across the councils. And I just wanted to make sure that those costs would include risk assessment as we go through that you're well embedded into that plan. That you know not just with county because it's not just county that's at risk here is it and services. It's it's the other 11 local authorities and part of this as well. And so you know I hope that there is a connection between county risk assessment and virus in LGR. Thank you Helen. Always pleasing to hear the importance of risk from a finance perspective and I've got my finance colleagues sitting just along the way from me. They're going to be significant cost risk in terms of the function of risk will be relatively low in relation to those. But they'll still be there and I think if there is some additional resources required I'd certainly go to them and flag that. Yeah. I think in the scheme of things it would be relatively low. And then on your point of potentially missing stuff that is absolutely a risk because you know new structures are in place. And it is easy to miss stuff. So we're just going to you know as I said it's one of these multitude of risks that we're just going to have to be mindful of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that isn't it really that's going to be important. Yeah. Thanks. Andy you ought to come in before. Yes just to clarify that there is no estimate for risk management costs within this implementation costs unfortunately. But however when we move into that implementation world David's world will be full of LGR risks. And so we are cognizant of it. And when we look at the the program governance and I'll come on to the governance and the work streams around it. Clearly there'll be a whole risk plethora of risks around all of that. So it will change significantly and it will ramp up from that perspective. But the implementation costs that you saw were predominantly around IT severance costs and so on and so forth. And not wanting to give the game away from the papers that will be published on probably on Thursday this week. But it will be around those things that will be in the implementation aspect. You make a good point around risks aligned with districts and boroughs. And I think again crystal ball job in terms of the governance and the decisions by government. And that's partly what the LGR risk is reflecting it is that you would go down a myriad of rabbit holes around trying to look at all the potential risks that are out there. And that's why we focused on we've got to wait for the government decision yet because whatever government decides then we have to react to that. We can know about the risks that are present at the moment in terms of maintaining services and delivering services from that perspective. There will be a funding risk without doubt that comes through unless government do fund our ask that we will be making of them. But there will be services in districts and boroughs that we that will complement and will have interactions with county services. And there will be a risk there in terms of maintaining that across because residents of Surrey don't necessarily care about the county or the district and boroughs. They care about the services that delivered so we will whatever the implementation governance looks like we're not clear on that risk will have to be feature as a part of that only from internal organizations. So for the 12 councils that exist at the moment but then going forward whatever the implementation board executive looks like that risk will will feature from that perspective. And David will be obviously key to that in terms of putting that together because one of the things we'll probably have to do pretty early on is to map what resources districts and boroughs have when it comes to mapping that supporting risk mapping. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much Chair. So obviously we've got all of the risks associated and the uncertainty with LGR but then of course we also have the global environment which is you know say the least going to be challenging whether that's related to growth, inflation, all of those factors over the next 12 months or so. So we're kind of going into you know I think you're really going to have your work cut out David in terms of analyzing those risks. In terms of looking at those from a global perspective how will we be gearing those risks that do you think are possibly potentially going to be coming towards us over the next 12 months. That's the crystal ball stuff isn't it. I mean I kind of reflect back two years ago when inflation was really running high and the problems with that. We had the situation with Ukraine, we've had the situation with Gaza and I did make a note in my point as you point out that these are global events some of these things but actually they still get impacted on us. And sometimes they impact us in ways we didn't foresee you know even things like you know with the Ukraine scheme where they've had people coming and relocate all sorts of things can impact us. So it is very much a kind of a watching brief at the moment. I think me personally when I think about the role that the United States plays and the way that things may be less stable in the decision making how things flip I don't think is necessarily helpful from when I think from a risk perspective because it's all around uncertainty. So it's absolutely a point isn't it. Anybody. Yeah just a commentary on how much we've moved forward over the last years that I've been set on this committee. It's very. Thank you. And Steve. Me again. The in paragraph six mentioned that the last kind of sentence is the visibility of the corporate risk credit system. comes to this committee and I assume that's one and the same thing about the strategic risk table. Obviously the strategic risk table that's just highlighting or calling out what the risk is. Usually there's a whole slew of other background information about mitigants and about how you arrive to that risk number. So my question is you probably guess is where's the rest of it. Can you see the rest of it please. So there is there is another part to that and I can separate if you want to share that with you. Some of that stuff is not easily publishable because certainly this is going in within the public domain when we talk about things like one of our key risks around cyber. And you know that there is always a threat there and it affects organizations. So within our risk register talks about some of the controls that we've got in place to mitigate that. So obviously wouldn't want to share that type of information. But if you wanted to have a view of to what that risk register is more than happy to I can run that through with you. That would be very helpful and I acknowledge that some of it might be part two. I.e. confidential. But yeah that would be helpful too. Thank you. I can set up a call with you if you please. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. David. Yeah thank you chair. Just going back to the LGR discussion I mean a couple of points. One is that I mean we do have items in the risk register you know just looking through it you know such as staff recruitment and retention. Yeah. Which I mean I think is going to be a key issue in terms of sort of going forward with LGR. And I don't know whether that will continue to be a sort of separate risk or whether it will be picked up in the broader sort of LGR under the broader LGR umbrella. So that was one question. And the second point was general just generally about the sort of BAU you know I mean one of the things that worries me. I mean you've got all this LGR work going on and we do need to focus on continuing against our budget. And it's been agreed the efficiencies has been agreed you know et cetera et cetera et cetera. And so I think that when we do the work on LGR we need to make sure that we've got that sort of dimension covered as well as all the changes which is what people start thinking about when they think about LGR. It's also about how we use of the next two years actually deliver our services, stay with them budget, deliver the efficiencies and that side of things and that somehow has to be picked up as well. Indeed. I mean maybe just in reverse order then you know performance is going to be a key part of how we maintain that over the period of time as we move through this process. Taking your point about recruitment and retention that is a corporate risk that is very much connected with LGR. I mean one of the things that we've done is you know with any reorganization that takes place staff members think what does it mean for me. That's a natural reaction. And so it's important that we can address that because you know in the majority of instances as a result of this reorganization there will be a 2P to whatever the future may be. So it's important to allow some of those anxieties that may be in place. So it's like you know what we're doing at the moment certainly with support from people in change or driven by people in change really is okay having those conversations making sure that the managers understand what's happening. They're getting feedback and the right messages are going through to staff members. So I know there's a monthly call to set up where those kind of things happen. So it's all of those kinds of mitigations where there are these short-term risks and there are things that we can do around them. So certainly we're in that space at the moment. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions or queries from members? No? Okay. So we are required just to note the update on risk management. Are we all agreed? No, thank you. Well thank you very much indeed David. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to item number 13. So this is the Code of Corporate Governance. So this report provides the committee with an update on the Council's Code of Corporate Governance. And this is over to you Asma. I think you're on mute. Can you hear me now? Yes we can. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. I was just saying good afternoon to members and thank you Chair. So you have before you a paper. It is a noting paper on the corporate governance of the Council. It last came to audit and governance committee a few years ago. So I thought it was right and proper to bring this report to you. The document basically sets out the framework within which how we as the local authority conduct our businesses and affairs and ensuring that we're doing the right things and our policies and procedures are open and transparent and up to date. The arts is of committee to approve the code. I can confirm that the code does go through an internal governance process and it will feed into the annual governance statement when we come to that part point in the year. Custodian assurances have been provided and confirmation has been given with regards to dates when there will be refreshing or updating or communicating or undertaking training on the various policies that are listed out in the code. So really it's over to committee members if they have any questions happy to take them. Okay. Thanks very much Asma. When was the last time that we did this review? Was it quite a while ago? So I am advised by officers that the last time the actual code came to audit committee was 2019. However, we do have the AGS every year. So it has been a while since its last year. Okay. Any significant changes since 2019 at all Asma? Okay. I haven't done that deep analysis of significant changes, but I can confirm through the custodian assurances. And if you look at the report, you'll see a list of all the policies. They are all updated or being updated. I'll tell you the exact page number if you just bear with me. It's on the appendix and it's at page 10, but it's at page 164. Yeah. Those are the supporting guidance documents. And the list are all on 165 that tells you which officers, senior officers are responsible for them. Okay. Wonderful. Thanks very much. Any members of the committee have any questions? Stephen. Thank you, Chair. It's a question that kind of rolls on from where you've just come from. It's around the changes. So one of the items that would be quite interesting to know would be what changes have been made. What are the comments and what are the changes that will update from the 2019 version to this version? And also whether or not there can be some basic version control and change management applied to this particular document. Because when this goes into the public domain, you know, if we basically have that version control on there, that might be quite helpful as well. But I'd be keen to understand a little bit more about what are the comments and what are the changes and updates from 2019 to where we are. And yeah, that would be really helpful. Through you, Chair. Happy to, if it's okay, happy to do that. I totally agree on the version control of the document and we'll implement that as soon as we come offline. With regards to the detailed analysis from 2019 to date, I'm going to caveat that. I'll do my best endeavours to see what we have and how we can track it. But what I can do and I'm happy to share is the list of the custodian assurance statements that they've sent to me. And I have a database that tells you when they were last reviewed. So I'm happy to share that with the committee. Okay. That'd be great. Thanks, Asma. Any other questions, queries from members? No. Okay. So the committee's asked to approve the updated code of corporate governance in the annex one and commend it to the county council for inclusion in the constitution. Are we all agreed? Sorry, Chair. If we could just possibly caveat that recommendation with the additions of the change control that we've just talked about, the slight additions. And again, maybe if you wanted to check them before, just to make sure we get. I'm not saying it won't get done, but just so it is recorded, if that's okay, please. Okay. I think we've got about a minute here. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Okay. So item number 14, the Office of Gifts and Hospitality Policy Benchmarking Update 2025. So if you remember, this request was made by this committee in September 24 to conduct a benchmarking exercise of other local authorities with regard to how their Office of Gifts and Hospitality Policies compare with Surrey County Councils. So the report presents the benchmark results and subsequent decision made by the council statutory officers to the Audit and Governance Committee. So I think this share. Fine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. So members will see that we've reviewed policies from nine other councils, and six of those applied similar wording to that used in our policy, which states that only small tokens of goodwill, such as promotional stationery, mugs, and so on, should be accepted by officers. Three policies from other councils included a value of £25, confirming that gifts offered below that value can be accepted. The benchmarking was considered by our statutory officers group, who decided that the current policy wording does not require inclusion of a value to clarify what constitutes a small token. And also to confirm, there is also no requirement for officers to record small tokens, which was another concern of the committee due to the additional burden that that would place on staff. But to further strengthen the robustness of reporting arrangements, we are going to ask members of the corporate leadership team to complete an annual return, even if they have not been offered gifts or hospitality. And that will also be reported to the committee in future as part of the annual report. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much indeed, Shala. Looks quite straightforward. Basically everything's been done, which that we requested. Any comments? No? Fine. Thank you. Thank you. So we are, this committee is asked to, one, note the benchmarking results within Annex 1. And secondly, note the decision made by the Council statutory officers after reviewing the benchmarking results to continue with existing officer gifts and hospitality policy, and to provide an annual return to this committee of all offers made to officers, and whether they were accepted or declined. This would include an annual nil return for members of the corporate leadership team, if appropriate, to further demonstrate appropriate compliance with the policy. Are we all agreed with those recommendations? Fine. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay. So moving on to item number 15. So this is the ethical standards annual review 24-25. So this is over to you. Thank you, Chair. I would just like committee to note, with regards to this item under paragraph on the finances, I just like it recorded that there was an administrative error in not including the financial wording. So if committee can just bear with me, the financial comments were to note under the financial and value for money implications section. Please disregard paragraph 31. As I said, this was an administrative error. Can you please note that finance have confirmed there are no financial implications in this report with regards to value for money. The cost arising from an external investigation and the payments made to the independent persons that are met from the democratic services budget. The cost of the members allowance is also reflected in the medium term financial strategy. So if members are happy, I can move on to the actual report itself. So what you have before you is the annual report that is brought to Audit and Governance Committee, because this committee is also responsible for members' code of conduct and standards. And set out in the report, I'm seeking various approvals with regards to the register of member interest form and noting the recent activity with regards to the members code of conduct, gifts and hospitality, and also to take a new approach within Surrey with regards to home addresses. Within the report, you will see I've listed the code of conduct complaints and I would just like to highlight to committee that 15 complaints did arise from members of the public. Sorry, 15 complaints have come to me that have been breached and 15 of them were from the members of the public. They, you will also note from the complaints that I've received that many of them did, none of them actually went through to investigation as I was able to negotiate informal resolution or some of them did not meet the required, the criteria we have set out in our constitution. I actually said the wrong number of complaints beforehand, sorry, 12 complaints were members of the public. You will see in the table that one of the complaints was referred to the Ombudsman following a decision that I made as MO along with the independent persons not to proceed with the concern. The Ombudsman did come back and informed me that they did, they basically were not going to investigate the concern as it was unlikely to find fault and I just wanted to highlight that to the committee. Also within the report, you will see under the white paper on devolution, there was also a paragraph in the paper, the white paper that spoke about the regime under the Localism Act and the current standards framework. I've set out in the report that a consultation has taken place, that consultation has closed. Thank you to those members of this committee who did respond and any other member who did respond. The code, sorry, the consultation that has taken place is looking at having a mandatory code of conduct for all local authorities, looking for authorities to actually convene a standards committee. Many models have this model where it's incorporated in an audit and governance and they're looking for authorities to convene a standalone standards committee. Having a role for a national body to deal with most serious cases of conduct, similar to what we had under the standards boards for England regime, which was abolished, they're looking to reinstate something similar. They're looking, they've been consulting on looking to introduce new sanctions to actually suspend members from premises and facilities and even go as far as introducing a suspension for up to six months with the option of withholding allowance. And for most serious cases of misconduct, they are looking at potential for disqualification. So once we have the outcome of that consultation and next steps, I would like to bring it back to this committee for consideration and comments and see what we need to do within Surrey. The white paper that I've spoke about that talks about devolution also set out the government's view on other aspects that aren't included in the report, but stuff around remote attendance and enabling members to attend meetings virtually to be more flexible. They're looking at introducing a proxy vote, where a member is temporarily unable to attend a meeting due to personal circumstances, for example, like illness and having proxy voted. And the one aspect that I'm looking to introduce here is the publication of members address. And I would like the committee, if they're in agreement, to move to having members address addresses not being published. And that if a member requires their address to be published, that they will write to me and I can reinstate their home address. But I'd like to move to the default position of not publishing their address. This all arises from the recent concerns over member safety. So that's the crux of it. I also wanted just to highlight within the report that around gifts and hospitalities, I'd like to introduce a more positive approach to gifts and hospitalities. You will see the list on the appendix of who has submitted and who hasn't. And I'd like us to introduce a nil return for members because when we do send out the reminder, a lot of members do not respond. So if we can move to a more proactive approach of writing to members asking for a nil return. So then at least we know that members have applied their minds as to whether they've received any gifts and hospitality. And you'll see that there's also a revised register of members interest form set out in annex four. And there's a section there with regards to the nil return. So that's a summary of the report and happy to take any questions, chair. Thank you very much indeed as well for a very detailed report. Thank you. And opening up to Helen. Thank you very much, Asma. Actually, you know, we had a discussion about this, didn't we, at the last council meeting. And I've raised it with the leadership of my political group. And I understand, I see David's here, because it's quite significant in some of the changes. I mean, I'm very, you know, as past chair of the council, I was always very proud of the level of good behavior by our members. And particularly compared to some of the stories that you hear from other local authorities across England, for example. I think we're relatively well behaved and well presented, et cetera. And some of these changes are considerable. And I do think that I would rather not sort of give my approval at this committee at this stage of political groups. I'm not sure how other members of the committee feel, but I think that there is some significance here. And I'm just hoping that you could be paid while we have that discussion because they will impact. I mean, you know, generally speaking, misbehavior or other issues around standards are often dealt with in we're ready to approve these recommendations today. Thank you. Yeah, I'll very much support that, that view, Helen. I don't know, any other members of this committee? Although, generally, you have Steve? Yeah, thank you, Chair. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it would be sensible to run by the political groups, just make sure. Otherwise, I'm sure, it all sounds very sensible, all of the items in there. But it's just one of those things, no surprises, full transparency. You know, not everybody watches all in governance. I don't know why, but there you go. But it would be very helpful, I think, if we can have that time to circulate that with the political groups and then bring it back to the next committee, if that's mindful, Chair. Thank you. Okay. Any other? David, did you want to? No, I mean, I totally agree. I mean, I agree with exactly what Helen said and Stephen said. I think it needs much population amongst the members and I think each political group, perhaps Azimac could come to each political group and just talk through the changes so that everyone completely understands it before it goes through for final approval. I don't think it's, most of it's contentious, but I think it does need to be aired more widely before approval is given. Yeah. That's a very good idea. Would you be willing to do that, Azimac, sort of attend different political groups? Definitely. Happy to attend political groups. I just want to clarify one point. The consultation that the white paper, the devolution white paper with regards to the standard regime has closed. You will see within the paper. So when I'll be coming round to the groups, I would only be discussing the aspects with regards to the register of members interest form and the ask of a nil return and the ask of the publication of members home address. The other aspects are noting, i.e., the member code of conduct and the gifts and hospitality. So there's only two matters that I would be bringing to groups, but I'm more than happy to attend. I just wanted to highlight that the white paper went out for consultation and that ran from 18th of December to the 26th of February. All members were notified of that consultation process as set out in the report on page, just bear with me, an email sent out by Sarah Quinn on the 3rd of December, Annex 4, page 215, explaining that. So until I know further what government's plans are with that consultation, I'm happy to share that with the political groups prior to coming to audit committees. I just wanted to clarify that understanding with all committee members, please. David, you want to come in? Yeah, thanks, Chair. Just hearing what ASMAT says, I mean, an alternative approach might be that we run a member development session, and that would be an opportunity for ASMAT to give feedback on the things that have come through the white paper, and then the things which are within our discretion to decide. That might be a more efficient, you know, time efficient way of doing it. So I'll just put that out there as a possible option. Helen's a member of the member development steering group. I mean, I don't know what she feels. Yeah. You know, I think that's absolutely, that's fine. I mean, I went through the questionnaire, and I was quite taken aback by some of the questions and recommendations or suggestions that could happen. And I don't think every member went through the questionnaire ASMAT and responded. And, you know, I raised it as a red flag, really, with my leadership because I felt it was so significant. I think the fact that it's closed, you know, is not a point. I do think members need to know what's in it. And they don't, I think, on the whole know what the questions are being proposed, as you've reported in this paper. So I do think we need a member briefing. I think that would be a very good idea to know what's coming down the line. Even though now it's closed, we can't comment on it. It's important that we understand what they're suggesting so that when it does come back for recommendation to implement it, if that's what the right paper does, you know, we're ready and prepared to understand what those changes mean. I don't think enough members understand the changes that are being proposed. And the implementation of that also goes on to selecting candidates for the next round of elections, which I know have been cancelled. But presumably for the unitaries, these new standards will be applied if they are approved by government. And we need to make sure that, you know, forthcoming, because it's very different to the current way of working. For all sorts of different reasons, many of which are completely understood, but it's different. And I don't think we really understand what's coming down the line. So, yes, please. And then, again, on the things like, you know, publishing your home address, I think that, again, some members would feel that that was, they might have a different view on that. But I think we need to talk to them and see on a wider point as to how they feel about that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, in terms of this audit committee, we are, we've got three recommendations, or we had three recommendations. So, I think we're okay with approving the revised registration members' interest forms set out in Annex 3 for introduction May 25. Secondly, noting the monitoring officers' report and recent activity in relation to members' code of conduct, including registration of interest and gifts and hospitality and complaints. And the third one, which was endorsing the new approach to be taken in respect to the publication of members' home address. I think we leave that one out until we have had a discussion within our groups and as a member development. Are we okay with that? Fine. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. We are getting there. So, item number 16, general dispensation for members. So, to request that the audit governance committee grant a general dispensation to all members to enable them to participate and vote in certain specified matters where they would otherwise have a statutory, disclosable, pecuniary interest. And I think this is you again, Asma. Yes, it's the last report members will all know. So, hopefully I'll be really, really swift. So, the procedure here within Surrey County Council with regards to seeking dispensations is to bring a report to audit and governance committee. So, I am asking the committee to grant an all member dispensation so members are able to vote, talk, discuss, be present in meetings with regards to local government reorganisation and also for the approval of the council revenue and capital budgets and setting of the council precept when the topic comes up at full council. So, this is a very prudent approach I'm taking. You will see that under the constitution, the powers for granting this dispensation under paragraph three sits with the audit committee. I do want to highlight that a lot of our members are twin hatters and some of them are triple hatters. I think that's the right word. And so, to give them this dispensation and allow them to speak more freely. I can confirm that lots of Ds and Bs within Surrey and lots of other county councils have also granted this dispensation. So, we won't be out of kilter in doing this. On the budget and council tax settings, I just really wanted to briefly touch a point. The granting of the dispensation does not relate to a member's disclosable pecuniary interests with regards to Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act. And that's where a member may have two months or more, they still must declare that at a council meeting so it doesn't impact on that. So, that's it in a nutshell really and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you very much indeed, Asma. Any questions from any members? No. So, I think we're generally in agreement on that one then. Okay. So, it's recommended that this committee grant a dispensation on an ongoing basis for a maximum of three years or until the resting date of any new authority to enable members to participate and vote in the following matters, irrespective of them otherwise having a statute of disclosable pecuniary interest. So, firstly, local government reorganisation, secondly, approval of the council's revenue and capital budgets and setting of the council tax precepts. And the committee notes that such dispensations do not relieve the member of the obligation to declare the interest or have such an interest registered in accordance with the member code of conduct. Are we agreed? Agreed. Thank you very much. And that brings us to the end of the meeting. The next audit governance meeting will be on the 4th of June, 2025 at 1pm. And I'd just like to thank everybody, the officers and all the members for any questions and for all the input in today's meeting. And also the team behind the shutters here as well. Thank you very much for administering the meeting so well. Thank you, Amelia. So, thank you. And I'll call the meeting closed at? 1254. 1254. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. ÂRODON