Transcript

Good evening to our officers and attendants, good evening to our members, good evening to those that are online as well. In the chamber I've got Councillor Rathbone, Councillor Lucas, Councillor Gabbert and Councillor Adejari. I'm just trying to have a little look if I've got any other further councillors online. I think I'll go through the preliminaries. So just to remind everybody that this is a physical in public committee meeting taking place this evening and it's been live streamed. Also we've had some guidance from Mark today around some of the sound systems that we normally use are not in place but however we do have an opportunity for people to be able to be heard and speak but just to remind each other that because of that there will be you know to be mindful of any sort of background noise or any sort of additional chatter that you might not want to be picked up by the councillors by the by the microphones. So happy new year everybody and I'd just like to welcome those members but particularly Councillor Gabbert who has rejoined the audit committee following the council sort of rejig of the constitution and committee membership. I'd also really pleased to welcome the two new independent members who will be joining this evening as guests and I can see them online. The independent members we went through a process where we interviewed for our independent members and for those watching online and for those who just need a bit of a reminder one of our needs was as an audit committee to have that independent scrutiny so I'm really pleased as the chair of audit to have been able to deliver that in partnership with Michael Sheffield and other officers and also councillor Chapman as well as the cabinet lead. So just before just to want to warmly welcome our independent members Anthony Marsh and Marion Doyen Salu they are the appointments at the next meeting will further strengthen our governance arrangements I've described and they're going to enhance the independence and it's they're going to do the skills and knowledge available to the committee as well because obviously both of them have got a financial background and I think having the independent members is obviously in line with what what is expected and also you know we're going to have people that are going to be in line with what what is expected and also you know we're going to have people that the best practice which is recommended by SITF as well so it's a really good achievement that we've done that. Also announcements is I'd like to congratulate Rahina Ramash on her appointment as director of customer services digital data so lovely it's lovely to see you as well it's brilliant to have you here and also anyone that's watching online and any of external colleagues so we've got yeah sorry you're right here from our auditors so yeah so we'll start with apologies for absence I had apologies been received by councillor Ross councillor Salman has indicated that she will attend virtually it may be a little bit later and then agenda item two is declarations of interest is anybody want to declare any declarations of interest that's not already in there sort of overarching register of interest and then we have minutes of the previous meeting can I ask the committee to agree the minutes of the audit committee which we had on 30 questions such a long time ago 31st of October 2024 as an accurate record of the proceedings okay what I'm going to do we have had a bit of a change in the agenda we are going to jiggle it around a little bit and we're going to have the order of chapter 4 progress report up to January 2025 um and this is going to be led by our corporate head of order order anti-fraud and risk management Michael Sheffield and Michael is joining us online this evening um so uh we'll give Michael the opportunity to go through that uh but members just be reminded of that you know what what we want to do is just to consider and note this as well and um be mindful of timing as much as well so Michael thank you so much for joining us online um you're welcome to just go through your your report thank you chair um it's the it's it's a similar report to what the committee is used to seeing so what I'll do I'll just highlight the the key um progress that's taken place firstly on the audit side and then the investigations and then I'll be happy to take any questions after after that so in terms of internal audit the percentage of the plan that's in progress is comparable to the equivalent date hang on Michael sorry Michael I've just got two members with their hands up I do apologize Michael um I've got Councillor Rathbone and Councillor Lucas yeah you're moving so quickly yeah I'm finding it difficult to keep up with things what what item is it 11. so agenda item 11 yeah yeah I think but I wasn't too sure because it was apologies I have a little crib sheet here which my wingman does for me and I apologize profusely uh just for those again that are watching online and for those that are in attendance we are actually moving agenda item 11. to now be the third uh to be the first sort of business agenda item um we have Councillor Chapman cabinet leaders just entered entered the room as well he'd also given his apologies for lateness uh apologies Michael if you'd like to sort of start from you know go from where you started that'd be great thank you sure not at all um yeah so in terms of how we're progressing with the current year's audit plan we're broadly comparable where with where we were at this point last year so 86% of the plan is in progress compared to 90% and the number of audits from the current year plan that are at the report stage are also comparable so that's 39% versus 37% last year so very similar um four audits um four audits have concluded this year so that's either from the current plan or from work from the previous year's plan that was carried over and finished this year there's four audits with a negative assurance rating which is limited or no assurance um and we have a categorization of four different standards so they're the two negative um assurance ratings there are two further reports that are at the draft stage that are likely to likely to result in a negative rating this year and that compares to two negative assurance audits in 2023-24 and none in the preceding two years so there's an uptick there in audits where the outcome is a concern um the the impact of the cyber attack on what could be audited post 2020 is i think the most significant factor in that uptick and i've also had a look back at um pre cyber attack um pre cyber attack pre-covid and there was variation in terms of the number of negative audit reports that came out each year and we are not out of the um what what was typical pre-covid um of the six audits with a negative assurance overall three of those concerned third party organizations so that's two schools and one tenant management organization which forms part of the work of the team both of the no assurance audits which is the lowest category that we would give concerned third party organizations in addition there's another negative assurance a limited assurance that relates to the cost of children in alternative provision and that was largely ended up being assessed as it was because of the role of a particular school in those in those arrangements so there's a pattern of that there's lower assurance is more likely to be a factor when it's looking outside the council than inside um that leaves two fully in-house hackney audits where there's limited assurance the first of those is the ict security which we discussed at the october committee report committee report and of seven recommendations six are in progress none of those recommendations are due for implementation just yet and the seventh recommendation is contingent on one of the other six recommendations being implemented before it can take effect so everything that can be done is being done with regard to that um the other in-house audit is temporary accommodation and there's a common theme to the recommendations from that review which i'll emphasize is a draft report so there's still scope that that may end in a different place but in terms of what's likely it's limited at the moment um and the common theme is that there are interim data solutions in place within some elements of temporary accommodation that were introduced following the cyber attack in 2020 um and that was to manage some of the accommodation booking process um and it's recognized by the service and by ict that those arrangements need to be updated and that will start in march 25 with um um an a new accommodation booking tool that will be introduced that won't be a perfect complete solution the perfect complete solution will come with the um procurement and implementation of an integrated it solution that housing more generally um and the order is certainly recommending that temporary accommodation needs are um given priority within that given the the consequences of temporary accommodation risk to the council at the moment um so that's the standing of the audits in terms of the implementation of the recommendations that come out of the audit work i'm pleased to say that management continue to be engaged with that and we're getting good results on that a hundred percent of the high priority recommendations have been implemented by the due date and eighty percent eighty seven percent eighty seven percent of the medium recommendations are either fully or partially implemented by the due date that compares to our kpi of ninety percent implementation it's a lower score at seventy five percent for the schools audits which um is is not uncommon historically but the audit service continues to work with the schools and with education to drive that number up and the only other thing that i would draw out on the audit side is that the professional standards that all audit teams work to have been reviewed by our professional body the institute of internal auditors and new standards and new standards come into effect on the first of april this year so we have evaluated the service against the new standards and um we're developing an action plan of what we need to do that the number of standards has increased and there are things that the service needs to do none of those are fundamental and i will bring a more in-depth update to that to a few to a future audit committee to um um to let you know what in more detail what what the changes are and what we're doing about that my assessment at this time is that we continue to broadly comply with the expected professional standards under the new regime um so that is the update on the audit side on the investigation side the thing that will jump out to um members that regularly receive this update is the down downward trend in the outcomes from the tenancy fraud work now that is purely because sixty percent of the team has been on long-term sick leave over the reporting period that that is in front of you now um i am pleased to say that we are now back to near normal staffing levels and i can i think that it's probably going to improve even further in the near future in the near future so i'm expecting this to be a temporary dip disappointing though it is with resuming normal levels in in the near future um and in terms of investigations more generally the number of referrals if i exclude tenancy fraud are slightly up on the previous year broadly in line um in terms of the national fraud initiative outcomes which is a table three under the investigation investigation section of the report um we've just received the the new data sets that they're refreshed every two years so we've got a new set of data to work through and you'll be getting the updates over the coming year as to how how that goes what i would say is that the the information we received in 2022 and the outcomes from that and the amount of work that's been reviewed it's substantially up on the previous um nfi nfi release which was in 2020 which was in 2020 which was in the middle of covid and immediately following the cyber attack so there's been good recovery on the nfi and good results have come from that and there also continue to be positive outcomes from all of the other investigation types um except for tenancy for this reporting period so that's what i would highlight from the report and at that point chair i would pause and take any questions um thank you michael um again michael i just want to say thank you for your support with the recruitment i don't know if i mentioned it before of our independent members um yeah so councillor chapman we have had some challenges with the um the audio system within the chamber today so um we are using something called maker or market what uh uh yeah so that's so you don't have to use that but be mindful that everything will be that that's good for me yes yes i guess there is an opportunity potentially use the closed captions right today oh we can move that closer okay move on okay okay apologies i wasn't i thought maybe um thank you michael i can see councillor garber has her hands up is that to solve for help to cancer chapman or did you want to just make a question can you change places to let councillor chapman be a little bit nearer would that be appropriate uh carry on i'll find somewhere okay yes thank you michael a very thorough report and a really good update as usual i just you picked on the bits i was going to ask questions about which is really helpful um just on the no assurance bit 4.4 um just can you explain a little like just my understanding of what you said about the third party organization around the children's alternative provision i wonder if that meant the send residential placements which in our risk register we like the price of 0.2 million so i wondered if that was the same thing like the send residential placement um it's not it's not send in its entirety but it it is there is elements of that in terms of the placements and the arrangements that hackney has in place so not all send is is through the arrangements that were reviewed as part of that audit but it would touch on it and there would be some overlap yeah i'm just interested that if we've got very no and low no assurance that that's a bit of a concern um and i know that if it is they are incredibly tricky because it's something i managed in the nhs it's really difficult to get under what those costings are um but yes in that um and um another question was now i can't remember where the page is oh on the on 4.3 where you've got the reasons for cancellations for the report the investigations that have been referred have any of these been referred before is this the first time that they've been referred like delayed just bear with me i'm just trying to find the the part in the report 4.3 um okay so that's details of the audits that have been um cancelled or postponed um so some of those audits have moved previously so councillor garber i'm sure you'll you'll remember um that a while ago you asked me about the climate change audit and that has been on the audit plan for more than one year um it has moved because partly of resources within the body the team to be audited also because of resources on my team um very briefly we have taken on an apprentice auditor so that is someone who's got amazing potential for the future but they need time to come up to speed learn the profession um we've got another member of the team who um is experiencing real problems at the moment so capacity wise internal audit is below what's ideal and that's the reason for that audit moving but it i i am conscious it's moved previously and the agreement we have is that that's currently slated for quarter one 25 26 audit the audit plan um in terms of the unregistered settings that the elements of that audit are now incorporated within another audit on the plan um in terms of clapton girls academy ict that was a request originally from the school and then they also requested for it to come back out again it's an interesting area that we might revisit in the future about the ict arrangements at schools more generally um and then there's an addition to the plan which was suffolk tmo which was a management request in year and i'd also emphasize it's not uncommon for there to be additions and removals from the audit plan it does need to be responsive and adapt as priorities come up through the year and as there's resource constraints within order and within services to be audited right thank you so much that was really good for me about the climate one with that assurance for the first quarter of 25 26 and i was meant to note that there's an apprentice and i think that's really exciting and i was also meant to welcome our new independent members and new members of the team so yeah thank you that's really helpful thanks counselor garber i can't see any other indications of any questions just to to summarize i think we need to uh consider and note the progress and performance of the order and anti-fraud service um and also just know i guess the sort of flexibility and agility that michael and his team have shown given the resource challenges that they've gone and the transparency um so members can you uh indicate that you um consider and note the progress and performance of the audit and anti-fraud service um michael you are welcome to stay if not um it's fine if you want to leave the meeting and thank you again for all your work um on this report and uh hopefully catch up soon if you're going to leave thank you michael take care thank you okay so uh council chapman we just had to rejig the agenda a little bit um so agenda item 11 was brought up um beginning of the agenda so we're back on track now with agenda item four which is the external audit completion report for 2023 um uh jackie mollins here is our interim group director of finance but we also have mizana raman uh system director of corporate finance may want to say something i think we've just got jackie with us here um in terms of father's mother's now isn't it i'll just get it right uh we have sirash patel in the chamber along with tom greenshill and welcome also to mark kirkham and to mazara malik who are online um sirash uh we've got 15 minutes for this did you want to just go through a few things or did jackie did you want to i don't know who's leading on this particular dental item lovely thank you sirash thank you oh to tom maybe if tom's going to be uh thank you um so this component's in your supplementary background and this is the audition for both the councils last 24th and i'll briefly kind of give you a bit of summary based on these um can i just remind members i know there's been a little bit of a challenge around the um agenda today and um the news i'm just really mindful that what's been sort of talked outside of those sort of formally presenting could be picked up by um those watching online uh so actually if you were able to just i apologize again for the for the situation with the noise but if you're able to just speak up a little bit more that'd be great thank you sirash thank you you're more than welcome if i don't i'm trying to think mike if you could sit with i don't know i could hear him would you like to stand yeah whatever you feel comfortable with that's perfect thank you sir thank you i know i know and it's not useful for the newer members of the committee to be aware that um so this all of these has been done in the context of a severe backlog of work thank you local authority accounts a little bit across the country uh and in london i suspect happy will be in a minority while council to receive a unqualified opinion of the march 2024 accounts i know the receiving members or members who have been here last year or two will be fully aware of that but the newer members uh i think it's usually easy to be aware of that that's got a testament to the quality of the accounts uh and the finance function here that allows us to carry out an audit um relatively quickly let me compare to some some other authorities so i just want to say thank you to the jackie and me and the team for supporting the audit team and what we need to do so the high level message really is that we're proposing unqualified audit opinions on both the council and the pension fund audit uh mizera will give you an update on the status that we reported in the papers i think that updated the 6th of january so things have progressed quite well on that um we're on track to issue our audit opinion well before the government to post backstop date which is the end of february so we're hoping to issue your opinion you know in february um we have no money for money weaknesses to report so that's consistent with prior years and we'll again issue that report value from the commentary you will you might have noticed in the summary that we have received two objections to your accounts uh so again a video of members to the committee uh as a local authority you uh residents are allowed to inspect your accounts and ask you questions and also raise objections where they identify or they think they've identified something that made you unlawful for the capsule's activity in an appropriate way uh we're currently considering two projections that you received during the relevant period um i'm hopeful that we'll be able to conclude on those in respect of what it means for the or the opinion before we issue that so we're working with the council on those two matters um and then i think the final thing was just to mention that um again it's been a really good process as i said again it's that national backlog so in the context i think it worked really well as a audit team with the violence team we'll have the usual kind of push up the lessons learned about how we can make even more improvements for the next year but um we've been pretty satisfied with how things have gone so let me let me hand over to nazira and just could be cut off back on the status there is an internal control recommendation we wanted to highlight and then tom's going to just briefly go through the findings and the unadjusted statements again which we have reported so nazira you want to do the status update please um so i'll start on page 17 which highlights status of the audit um we have now completed work on the outstanding order areas being group consolidation officers remuneration pension schemes cash and financial instruments both evaluations and indexations work is complete subject to review on the value for money and whole of government accounts work the position is as stated on the report and final review procedures are ongoing and as suresh mentioned we hope to complete the file closure procedures before signing in early february i'll move on to the control deficiencies so from page 30 we have noted three other deficiencies in internal control just to highlight on the second deficiency noted on page 31 on indexation so this is regarding the supporting data used for the assets which are not revalued um this has not resulted in the material misstatement but could potentially be significant in the future which is why we've highlighted it um we are happy with management's response on the indices that will be applied going forward um once review has concluded we'll update you on whether any um control deficiencies further control deficiencies come up in the follow-up letter um i'll now hand over to tom thank you um i'll start on page 12 which is the definition risks that's um the general section and i won't go into more detail on the slide and and basically we're giving a bit more analysis into what we do at the bottom of this slide um so out of the um two 74 manual journals switching up to the general entry raised by the council and we performed a risk analysis and found 30 50 journals and which we needed to test and those are outlined um at a high level so we're not giving you the actual criteria that we look at it knows and we also look at the accounting estimates including line-up statements we consider um significant transactions outside of the normal course of business which keeps us um in this case i'm sure you've said there has been no bad material misstatement suits fraud and there's been no evidence of management overriding controls in our testing on the following page and it's the valuation of property plants and equipment and which issues which size comes up every year and so this year and we tested 53 items of ppe and we also had an internal valuation specialist to look at the methods that the valuers have used in order to um challenge the um the methods of opportunities for that valuation and and we've agreed and we have to be underline data and assumptions and we haven't found any um this work but we are still looking for many of our own classes not really valued in here and so the indexation work we call it it's been about certain airlines and just going through the review at the moment so we'll report that we find it to do the follow-up letter but we don't expect anything um and then again just over the page on page 14 we give a bit more information to the value of the tested items and the repalued assets and that we've performed over the next page um is the investment property so there is a large balance and uh valuations are incredibly complex in this case we tested some of 25 of 107 of the total assets and we looked into the evaluation and and we also reviewed the data and evaluation report for accounts and practices for the broken accounts makers and disclosures in the financial statements we'll do that as well for the ppe and again it's given um a high level of view that the pressure are performed this doesn't mean the audit conclusion there and overly is the next time benefit liability valuation which is the attention's liability valuation um again it's a very large balance and it uses discount rates inflation rates mortality all of which is a high level of complexity valuation and and so we've outlined there that we've done to address the risk which looks at the skill and competence of the fund actuary we challenge the assumptions again so consumer pricing with the best discount rate like expectancy and we use um our business expert which would be the bwc and gmail and disney heads and the area to carry out um uh benchmarking work um and we've not found anything in these particular retention in terms of this work there was also um an effort for the national issue which is a very technical accounting issue and and we've carried out work and the council have carried out work with the use of um and actually this is kind of problem and we found that there's no need for any adjustment to be made to the financial statements without getting into too much detail around that one and but there's no no need to worry on that anyway um in terms of the mistakes if you turn to page 24 and there are three segments of the experience of retention one of them is and factual and two are projecting the statements and and they're all interested as they're all about performance materiality so the factual misstatement relates to a rental agreement with um the archways um uh the galston arches um and therefore it's not likely to require them in a population so it's specific in nature so we wouldn't expect that error to be projected in a wider population and and it it rose up as a result of the amount of growth estimated a couple of one million pounds uh for an income transaction and it was 22-23 which means that the income this year was overstated so we can see the effects of that on the uh crs and the balance sheet in that very much and the other two items i'll just draw attention to the largest one and which is around and the overstatement have been uh related to two sampled items and again they were correctly recorded 23 24 which has been 22 23 and that was around and overall so the actual error is about 435k um but what we do is we take the percentage error in the potential we test and project that again so why would the total population give us an idea of what that error um could be representatively and we think that would be 4.4 million um i have to say though there isn't evidence for that and because it's an estimation of what the error would be the council have decided not to adjust and we're comfortable and i'll just move on to the pension fund while we're still still and still here and then on other questions and this is in the other um addendum to the path and there isn't much to bring your attention to here so the outstanding work in this report on page seven is the related parties and their return on investments the related partial group is waiting on more declaration and the interest then that work will be completed and that is being chased at the moment and the other is return on investments we can now say that work is completed um and that will go green so that one needs to be followed up um and there are another segments report uh on the front side so um um thank you tom um i just was mindful um uh when you mentioned ppe as a health background i was like oh personal protective equipment um and i think it is property plant and equipment so it's yeah yeah um uh it's a bit of a theme going here so i just picked up a little bit about the land value and sort of you know assets and such stuff which i think we're all sort of mindful of in the council around that as a sort of key thing in terms of what all the council owns and whether or not we've got value and and such like so it's very interested in the audit committee to sort of see the external audit picking that up as well around making sure we've got the right valuations um i'm uh just trying to see if anybody would like to ask anything um in terms of the pensioners committee could we just keep it in terms of what's actually there in terms okay councillor garbert so thank you for the report i think you were looking at the just your page numbers aren't you so page 20 the leases one i just i don't know if you mentioned this in your intro i don't think i heard it but i just i'm intrigued to know why this is an issue shout out if it was sparked by anything in particular if this is a common issue for other councils and then my other question i was going to ask about that um kind of investment bit independent bit so i was interested in on page 19 of the pensions report where it's note 22 about the london city does it not not being considered a definition of a related party it's interesting i don't know why that was so i understand it collection of local authorities and it's a lot of attention yeah there's two questions thank you yeah okay so the the first question was on the and at least it's finally anything um on the cancer side and so it's it's not a large issue which we would expect um cause problems that counts so um our original sample testing came out in the sample cycle one because the signs of the balance so um what happened in the testing was that um the dates on the um checkbook which chocolate release liability were different from uh which we'd seen in the lease agreement and so we decided to expand that sample and make a sample of 15 just to make sure that the dates were correct so all of those are now being corrected if we do that sample 15 15 until the capsules are also getting four and exercise before we take another sample 15 so we're comfortable that those um states are now correct and all of these should have been worked through so i don't think it should be um i shouldn't do that anymore so here you can see the management response that the full photo checks on all of the rental items and the lease schedule has been updated for any changes um it can happen in in live entities where there are a lot of leases um so it's it happens across a number of different bodies but i wouldn't expect it to go to material because it's just to make sure that that's what happens and then i'm just going to have to remind the underneath yeah page 19. yeah 19 of yours no 22. it's going to be removed because there's not the definition of the related service but i don't know how that featured in this it's a good right understand the port of one yeah sorry around my friends and remember yeah with the proper answer was a little bit of time again because i think the reason for it would have been a technical team would have kicked it upon review and it would have been around and the control of the two entities so whether or not or is actually and everyone's doing that so yeah it's good to understand how that pictures it in the way this report is done thank you thanks great thank you thank you councillor gobbett um so group members what we need to do is we need to authorize for our interim group director of finance to approve the final statement of accounts for 2023 24 contingent upon the completion of the outstanding work by the external auditor as detailed in the order um can we have an indication that we're happy to for our interim group director of finance great thank you so much um thank you very much um farvis measures uh suresh and um tom you're welcome to stay or feel want to leave that's fine and also for mark and for massara thank you very much uh myself for your um contribution that was great and you're both also welcome to um to leave the meeting and thank you again very much for your help supporting the council um with our external audits um so we now proceed to um agenda item five which is the finance update and i think we are going to probably also do the treasury management update at the same time and also uh we've got some uh questions on the agenda around the treasury management strategy as well for 2025-26 um so uh we're going to welcome our our interim group director of finance jackie moyle moore is going to provide a presentation to us on the committee members we've already uh got this up there um and this is as i said it's going to include the treasury management update agenda item six and then also the treasury management strategy um so thank you jackie if you'd like to do your um audit committee finance update thank you what we're going through today as the chair set out this this update covers the finance update but also the treasury management update treasury management strategy item seven and the capital item in the performance update item 10 so that's what we're covering in terms of what's in your agenda back tonight we'll go through the forecast petition for 24 25 on the general fund similarly on the hra a very brief overview of the outcome of the original local government's finance settlement which we got just before christmas uh the mtfp progress update and that's sort of just um reiterating the update to the mtfp which happened back in november which we're also currently updating again as a result of the settlement um cover the treasury management update the capital program and the deep data status update on deep dies which all the commission is undertaking so first of all the current budget position in terms of the general fund forecast and this is what was reported to december cabinet so we're reporting an overspend at just under 37 million and that was a slight improvement of around 1.2 million on the previous year's uh report and reset previously and i won't go through what some of the mitigations it's got us down to the 37 million position uh the main cost pressure areas are in children's education adult social integration mainly to do with placement costs and also in terms of care packages in adults health and integration so very much demand-led pressures in those areas but also this year um for the first time got a really significant um overspending homelessness prevention of 19 and a half million and a shortfall of parking income there's a very small um overspend in relation to achieve its excellent underspending finance and and resources so these are some barriers we're quite familiar with and i think previously at board committee i've given an update some of the actions we're taking particularly around uh temporary accommodation so the next slide is just a summary of that that position i'm happy to circulate these slides after the meeting so in terms of um the impact of this pressure obviously it presents a major challenge to our financial sustainability going forward as what this will mean is a significant drawdown on the reserves for 24 25 and it's certainly not positionally sustainable and one of the things we've done is part of up in the medium term financial plan is to um include significant amount of budget growth into those areas where we've got those significant overspends but also work to try to to um to contain some of those overspends and reduce cost pressure in those areas but just to put it in simple terms if we were to do nothing and we continue to overspend at the rate we are resourced our current reserves in two to three years and that could be faster if if spainland could continue to grow exponentially but also if there was no resolution to the issue around the statutory override on the dedicated thoughts well just to to remind members what we've got at the moment it's got a negative reserve balance on our balance sheet and 30 million in relating to the dsg which are allowed to have this statutory override position is in place what this next slide shows is our position on reserves which is really important to be transparent around this so in terms of the reserve position so as our accounts will show us at the beginning of the end of the last financial year we had 154 million pounds in reserves and that included 18 million of general fund balances which you would want not want to lose so that they are the really the reserve of last call plus 9.7 million in relation to school balances and they're really not in our um in our power to spend they're part of the local management of schools and schools make decisions on those balances and how they're spent spent that gives us a remaining balance of 126 million uh we've got the forecast usage which is in in the um forecast vision this year of 8.7 million and that is the use of reserves and and old grants where they're very specific and we factor them into the forecast uh we've got committed committed reserves so reserves that are very much built thanks we would like to utilize those in the future and that includes a pfi reserve the insurance fund and the election of reserves so they're not legally ring friends but they're what they're against uh commitments because we know we've got in the future and then we've got third party agreements so we've got balances that we hold jointly with health where we have to agree with health how we spend them so they're not available for our use and finally you've got um reserves that we set aside for capital purposes but but their areas they're not legally rent rates and we can use them services so they're really in our purview to use so that gives us brings us down to a 73.2 million of other useful reserves as i said to set out there's some from flexibility in those reserves about but what we're making sure we do is continue to report to members of each position on our reserves which is really important in terms of our financial resilience in in the longer term what we would like to do is build our reserve back up if we get to a more a sustainable position year on year um just to to remind audit committee that we added a significant amount of growth into this growth into this year's budget of 17.6 million excluding the growth we added for the power world and there was also an additional 8 million that went into the budget from social care grants so however as you can see from our position the the the demand on those services as far exceeded that growth and that's why we're having to have a significant amount of growth to next year's budget as well to try to find out those positions and plus to take account of the fact that that demand is likely to go up even further next year um i'm not going to go through the areas of that pressure because i think that they're well rehearsed as i mentioned previously homelessness and social care there was a number of spending spending reduction initiatives initiatives that are underway portly so that's in addition to what they're doing in the individual directorates try to contain pressures um and we spoke about these previously so there is a non-essential spending freeze a freeze on recruitment both permanent nature speak and overtime restrictions just to be clear there are exceptions to those controls because there'll be some areas where you need to you need to recruit a member of staff either because you need to have a statutory safe service or if you don't recruit that that post you might reduce your income so you have to be obviously keep directors have to be sensible and balanced about the decision they take around that that that suspension they are approving but also monthly budget recovery balls in place which is chaired by the chief executive and has oversight over both the um the cost pressures that we've got and measures that are being taken but also over these um non-essential spend initiatives i thought it'd be helpful to set out the impact of those non-essential spending initiatives on the forecast to date so what this tech table shows is as at the end of november sorry as at the end of october uh we've identified some 2.3 million the 2.4 million of non-essential spend that we can hold so effectively underspend which we're holding against the the overspend in the um in the uh in the forecast and that's two million on the general front and and three sorry 356 000 on the height hra so really what that is doing is measuring the impact of those those um spending measures on the forecast in terms of the um the agency forecast this is this is a less less favorite position because we're still forecasting significant spend on agency so as you can see we're forecasting it's just under 44 million in the general fund and and just under 4.5 million in the um in the hra so there's some areas where it's it's reduced so for example in finance and corporate sources uh we've seen a significant reduction and that is a result of um either a releasing agency staff earlier and converting agency to permanent members of staff or just where we've got uh potential employees on the day right just putting down the data that they're working in hackney to uh to make sure we get that reduction in in um in spend in some areas we're not seeing the increase so for example adults is a good example that has increased by just over half a million and the primary driver of that of that is delays in recruitment to housing with care staff just to be clear this is not an increase in the forecast overall it's an increase in what we're actually spending on agency staff so we were forecasting that would be on permanent staff because there's a bit lately lately we are actually spending on agency stuff so i'm going to hand over to the adrian right position so the forecast for the hra although it's a break-even position there is a forecast overspend on the operations expenditure of 10.7 million now and this this uh overspend is on reactive repairs and it remains a key risk in the forecast going forward as we enter the winter months um and we have uh we have got some mitigations in place to reduce that to to bring the hra back into balance and they are listed there i suppose the key thing to note is that we did have a budgeted contribution reserves of two million plans for that we can no longer make this year and that was to get us up to 10 of our turnover from the hra um and we we are now having to draw down um from the resilience reserve so that is a 2.8 million um impact adverse impact on our reverse position for the hra and again like for the like for the general fund we do need to be really careful on that we we will run out of reserves if we continue to see this overspend particularly repairs um um the the reasons for the overspend and you can see that most of these bullet points are related to repairs we've got a overspend on the dlo because we we just need to have additional operatives to manage the increasing number and complexity of legal disrepair um legal disrepair is open overspending the alternative dispute resolution is seeing a forecast overspend but we will hope we're hoping once as we get that process up and running it will give us same savings over medium to long term building maintenance is overspending um there is a smaller overspending in housing management related to uh counter tax on board properties and empty properties not not in use at the moment and um resident safety is forecasting and overspend because we have to have increased expenditure on areas where there's some there's some safety issues on resolution blocks and we have um we have an overspending portion that's about um so we just so there's the we need overspending primarily in patriotic repairs driven and um that's an area where we need to see some action so moving on to the original local government settlement which we got just before christmas and so these are some high level figures here um so overall the government and measures the increase in local government funding through what they call core spending power and that measures both external funding but also our ability to raise council tax and increase council tax so in overall local government spending core spending power increased by six percent across england the average increase in london was 5.7 percent hackley's core spending power increased by 7.8 and the main reason for that was the introduction of a one-off we think it's one-off at the moment recovery grant and that has been very much disputed in favor of those those authorities that have got high levels of deprivation but also low council tax basis and perhaps reforms into that into that category so that a lot of the met met authorities got high levels of that and we did some of our neighbors were less less fortunate in terms of the level of funding they got from that recovery grant it really was more than we expected um in terms of the council tax the settlement confirmed the the ability to increase council tax by five percent including two percent in relation to the adult social care precept the government announced the compensation for the national insurance contributions increase of five five hundred fifteen million they didn't announce the um how it was going to be allocated and what we do know about that that is will not that will not be sufficient so it's meant to meet the cost of uh a direct uh impact on the council i.e the additional contributions we have to pay it won't be that um and it and it will not be and it wasn't intended to meet the indirect costs of those suppliers where they've got increases in in pressures in their their areas and might look for increases to the um government that's right to the council's funding of those services so that is going to be a pressure and that's something that we're working into our median term financial plan in terms of sort of specific grants we saw an increase nationally of 233 for 300 million of the homelessness prevention grant it's worth mentioning that in london alone the forecast overspend on homelessness is important that's because we sit here today so that's insufficient in terms of what the council got from that we got an increase of 3.4 million up to 11.1 million for homelessness prevention grant just to go back on on the stack that i mentioned earlier in 20 24 25 we're a forecasting labor spend of 19 and a half million for the current financial year obviously it wasn't it wasn't expecting the other fund to fund us for that in its entirety built budget growth into the um plan for next year but obviously that the um the addition we've got on homeless although well with them doesn't really touch the size in terms of the issue um the rural services for how much obviously we didn't get any of and the services grant that we we did has been cut completely but we expected that to happen that wasn't unexpected the social care grant was increased by 880 million and hackney got 6.7 million increase in 25 26 which was more than expected which was which was good news and that does help us to offset some of that growth in terms of balancing the budget we also had the announcement of a new children's social care prevention grant which is worth 250 million and again hackney did relatively well out of that in receiving 2 2.4 million and as i mentioned previously the main area where we saw additional funding from government was around the recovery grant there was 600 million nationally and happening allocation was 9.7 million and that is i think it was a second second or third highest in london in terms of of of the allocation of that grant and these speakers are currently being worked through to update our medium-term financial plan will include an updated medium-term financial plan in our budget report which goes to cabinet in and for council in february in terms of um future future prospects there is still significant uncertainty about the impact of of local government finance funding reforms from 26 27 and going forward we might have a some kind of indication in the summer and there will be consultations probably beginning this spring we don't know where that's going to take from there's a few things i think it's probably worth mentioning there is that since we had the last um general uh review of of funding that happens relative deprivation has improved so in terms of you know we're better we're slightly better off than than other authorities but we still have a low low council tax base and i think it's it's worth highlighting again that was a big factor in terms of how much of the recovery grant that this council received um we've obviously got the cost pressures in the system as i mentioned previously that we've made you know significant provision for that in the budget and we will be 25 26 but there's a risk that those pressures should continue to increase i think there's a lot of work going on in in in relation to ta in particular and that's because there's some quite i keep saying there's quite chunky things you can do to have a reasonable impact on on ta costs which we are we are working really hard to do and and you know you'll see some of those coming through in the in the coming coming months there's always a risk about the achievement of medium-term financial plan savings we do monitor those on an ongoing basis and you'll see that in in the afp this year we've been added an appendage which looks at those those um savings in particular and uh rad rates the cheaper of those savings energy prices are always a risk we have got a reasonable vision in the um median term financial plan for energy crisis we've been able to produce that provision as as sort of prices have stabilized a bit in in in recent last year or so but that is always a risk as i mentioned previously but we still carry that send deficit don't we in terms of 20.3 media there's not a resolution to that at the moment although the governments are clear they want to do a review in that area and i think the the the final point to note is that obviously that you've seen in the press over the last week or so around those those uh uh increased in in government borrowing and the fact that government foreign is taking that bigger bigger and bigger slice of of of public funding and obviously that that potentially gives you the risk of a further squeeze in terms of uh expenditure but it's below that government so that is a risk that we're monitoring closely and what we should have better idea of that and probably thanks for an early summer in terms of the median term financial financial plan i'm not going to spend too much on this because we're updating this because it went so we updated it as part of the ip for november and that showed an updated gap of 67 million across the financial years 25 to 26 to 27 28 and that was after taking account of the um the savings authority approved and but it also took account of the in-year pressure so those those cost pressures that were being forecasted throughout the year we updated our medium time term financial plan to take account of those but as i said we were currently updating that again taking into account the provisional settlement so in terms of the budget development timeline this slide just really sets out where we are so we've got a second round of savings proposals that due to go to cabinet in a couple of weeks time as well as the hra budget and rent setting report we get which goes to cabinet for approval at the end of the month we've got the council tax base report which is a very sort of technical which sets that up the council tax base in which we were able to to raise council tax but also the collection rate for council tax and and and what we're expected in terms of business rates income so that will come to to cabinet and council in january we've got a third phase of budget proposals which are due to be approved at cabinet in in february it's probably just worth emphasizing that all these budget proposals have been through a scrutiny process you you would you members would have been involved in and then we move on to the final report which is the uh will be the council tax and budget setting report which include it won't include plays free break payments they'll go in the ip which will go to cabinet and council in february so moving on to treasury management so including in your pack is a is a half-year update i think the main main thing to note in this half-year update is that we've had an increase in borrowing which wasn't wasn't expected so that's a factor of our obviously our ambitious capital program and that would be now into externally borrow rather than internally borrow for some of our our our capital schemes and we've also set out there that uh what our investment portfolio position is so we've got we had balances as at the end and invested as of the end of september of some 50 million and that just sets up how they was invested an average rate of interest that we've achieved which was just under five percent so that obviously on the negative side interest rates uh affects us in terms of external debt they do bring in more than interest income and that's part of part of the obsession some of our overspend this year um i think i've covered this slide actually i'm not going to go over that so it's basically just confirming that uh we've complied with all laboratory indicators and just sets out the movements in the room over the over the period and again what this slide shows is what the interest we see over the past over the first two quarters of the year compared to last year and actually you see that that has gone down significantly that's partly to do with our cash balances and and the fact that we've been uh invested in our capital program but moving on to the conclusion that look i sat out in the update we've undertaken new long-term borrowers i mentioned previously the higher interest rates obviously mean that we're um that we're taking that boring at a much higher rate than we had previously although we do take advantage of the fact that you can you can borrow a lower rate for the pwb in relation to hr i think is it one percent below the no four four bits four point four the general um pwb rate but obviously we get one day from the gain from that investment income so the next few slides really just set out is is a treasury summary points around our treasury management strategy so that in the report tonight the automatic is asked to approve the drive to every management strategy 25 26 27 28 which we submitted to council as part of the budget report in february it's worth noting from that from that um strategy the key points are the council is moving towards more borrowing to meet these financial capital financial requirements as cash reserves decline um i've stepped out there that the current borrowing is 127 million there um and the average rate of interest which we're borrowing out in an area this is the moment it's 3.1 but that is going up because obviously borrowing we've taken out there is it is at a higher rate the capital finance requirements projected at 1.4 billion over that period so at the end of 27 28 we don't borrow that amount externally we'll utilize internal balances where we can and also what we'll find is as you will see from that capital update reports you do find that uh travel schemes are ambitiously and profiled and they tend to slip out to the right and that means we don't end up worrying as much as much will be anticipated so in terms of 25 26 the council's foreign foreign as set out in that strategy is 883 million as i said this this reflects the ambitious vicious capital program we will not be borrowing at that level um the actual borrowing will depend on that cash balances and also on the uh how we are able to progress our capital program we will continue to use a pwb hra rate which is lower than the normal pwb rate this also worth noticing um emphasizing that this year we did have the we we had the hackney green investment initiative which was the um it's almost like a crowdfunding but it's investment opportunity for the local residents to support the capital program and particularly the um the green elements the capital program will be able to achieve what we've set out to raise on that's at 0.6 million i think it was um treasury investments are only um this is part of the policy treasury investment will only be made with five high credit quality counterparts that have minimum a minimum long-term rate of a nine so effectively low risk in terms of whether we're likely to to maintain that capital value and effective treatment especially management continue to remain crucial to ensure borrowing is affordable sustainable within potential limits we've never exceeded our potential limits in the while we're doing over the next over the coming year so moving on to the capital program which is incorporated as part of the performance report tonight um reports to forecast is that we'll spend uh 300 million this year which is um 9 million below the budget of 309 million and as we've mentioned previously we do have significant slippage slippage in the capital program and that's largely due to economic factors and other external external factors and the main areas of the reporting at this audit committee is a slippage in relation to stable generation and has a supply and just just to reiterate just because we say it's not spending this year doesn't mean you won't spend it in future years and that budget does roll forward to future years because obviously a capital project is a multi-year budget other factors and i'll just call out a couple of these britannia project which is a you know 300 million pound project we've spent um we expect to spend 4.7 million um less than we did less than the um anticipated but there's other areas where we were spending more so for example um in the amp housing scheme a total of 6.6 million i would expect to spend for the year and that's largely due to the delivery of energy energy efficient work to max maximize grant funding moving on to the accounts update i won't go into this in detail so these are the backstop dates which is set out by government so effectively if you don't get your opinion by that date then you're likely to get this disclaimer opinion from your your auditors um so as as suresh pointed out earlier we're unlikely to be in that very unlikely to be in that in that space we should get our opinion on the 23 for um accounts in early february and that means we're completely up to date in terms of that accounts and opinions which is a really good place to be in because it's not common across london so we're really pleased about that and that's a testament to the hard working team but also the really positive relationships we have with our auditors moving on to the audit committee deep dives cost of capital borrowing we've done numerous sessions on that and and and that should that report should come to april's audit committee we've also agreed two areas of deep dives for 24 minutes a year and we'll get these in before the end of the ministry year and that's in relation to the transformation program and revenues collection and you you were getting um dates out we dated we're going into the diary around those private deep dive settings very soon that's a quick gallop through that's the last one thank you so much jackie um i think you know uh we uh i think all of us on all of us as members on the committee are just you know absolutely pleased to see about the accounts being up today because i think that's something that's so valuable for us to sort of give in the challenges that the council's gone through at the moment with lots of things um i i just wanted to just just clarify something um the climate action stuff so we borrow from the crowd funder we aren't actually borrowing to we're not borrowing from the public you know well yeah we're not so it's a crowd funder isn't it it's it's an opportunity for the local residents and other residents actually you can't be stripped to your local area to invest in a climate climate capital program so it's it's running by it's run by a couple of people who run a similar scheme i think it's in westminster number a number of other borrowers but what they they do we don't have to build a platform but we engage them to run the platform and that that's the curious thing so it's it's a friend there's a couple events one they give us some funding which is it's below what we borrow at but the second thing is it's really good in terms of getting local people invested in in in in the climate action home for the borough so it sort of raises a profile of that that work as well did you understand yeah our first um launch uh raised more than expected i mean expected half million we've got 600 we got approval by cabinet to um to to try to uh get a million after a million and we're planning for another launch for a minute next quarter excellent thank you so much um yeah i'm just mindful members that some of the things that have come out within the finance update may link to agenda 18 in terms of the risk register for climate homes and economy um so just be right of that but uh chancellor lucas thank you thank you very much uh chan and thank you for that comprehensive update and just to give it a few to you to the university for all the council so that's clear well i've just had a question around a couple of questions but one on the next uh compensation that you mentioned in the the broader financial day you mentioned that we weren't entirely sure how it was going to be allocated yet so two points of that one it when will we know that last week you kind of wonder the final spending uh is finished and the second thing is how are we building assumption into our medium to financial plan just a second question if i may very briefly on the treasury management strategy i'm interested at 7.6 in the pattern on page 41 around longer term loads you mentioned obviously the pwlp that we um rely on quite significantly but we also mentioned in our paragraph that there's a possibility of um issuing bonds and other similar issues i just wonder how common that was some legislative authorities and so also we mentioned there the banks that we work with um and i think it there's real reform issues elsewhere it wouldn't be what might be a sort of blending instruments like that and other banks need to meet for us to use them as kind of bodies that are going to the roads so on the national insurance yeah we've got an estimate we've got a fair idea we haven't got the allocation so when these um figures come out we always have a relatively fair idea that i forget there's some of the we can but we think we'll get about for a million which is short on what we need i think for a friend for an inspector we're sure about that one or two million on the um general fund but also one thing i didn't mention actually which i should have mentioned is that we are able to do some of that funding for the hra now previously when we've got conversation for things we haven't been able to use it for the hra this we can use some for but again it's not to cover the full cost for the hra so there is a shortfall there and we have an estimate in terms of the the boring the reason it refers to bonds and other financial instruments is precisely so we can do the type of thing we mentioned around the um the green that you know the green community investment in the green so that's what that covers in terms of the the the facts if this is this is around suppose this is really just overnight money market plans that's so it's what we tend to do is see the best rates overnight and we can i mean what i could do is um i've asked for people who's our um head of treasury management to find a little bit more detail of that at the next committee actually just have a feedback that'd be helpful thank you and uh cancer rathbone i saw you had your hand uh indicating thank you sure thanks very much jackie um so many questions i wanted to ask um and thank you for all that you're doing what was an incredibly difficult situation i just wondered um what if you could just explain a bit more about the recovery grant um recovery plan how how that exactly happens um have we applied for things or is this just something the government gives us that goodness of their heart well i've got three questions so the second one is just um i know i noted that um can't read my writing now um yeah 233 million increase um in the homeless there's spending i just wondered what what exactly is that that's a lot of money is that all to do with accommodation paying for accommodation or what then thirdly i just wondered about saying i think we did say there isn't you don't know what's happening there but is it is it likely that we are going to be getting any more only for that over 20.3 million deficit is very challenging no sense of it decreasing next year or something so yeah just yeah i'm just mindful we're about 50 minutes over at the moment so yeah it doesn't we've got recovery grant that was a new grant that we set out we didn't don't offer it what they do is that they um they allocated based on deprivation and the base of the credit and if you've got a low touch space which we have got and a high level of deprivation we've got more of that grant so and the reason one of the reasons we got more than we anticipated is because the government drew the line much higher up in terms of deprivation than we expected them to so that some boroughs didn't get any which might have expected to get some of that run so it's really busy really we are dependent on the government's um method of application we did quite well at that this year in terms of the 233 million that is the homeless suspension one that's not that's not the only that's not the overspend so the overspend in london is more than that what that tends to be on is the cost of providing temporary accommodation for the most part and that's largely just about increasing demand across london plus the increase in unit cost for that temporary accommodation the last point was on onset i think there will be a resolution to it some in some whether it'll be a satisfactory one or not is another matter so i would expect that they have to do something about it because if they don't do something about it it's got one of those things that tip a lot of boroughs over the edge it's a national problem we've got a high same deficit it's not the highest in london it is a high same deficit so i expect they would have to do something whether that is just extending the override why they sort out the underlying issues or not um i don't expect in the in the short term there'll be a fun there'll be fun in that deficit i would say that we've got an increased in-year allocation the percent of 25 26 so we're getting towards that point um where year on year we're in a better position but we're still carrying that that historic deficit thanks very much is that everything yeah and then counselor copper yeah having my thanks to jackie and the team on this i don't know it's continuously really difficult i'm i'm sorry if i missed it because there was loads in there you know you were talking about um profiling working through pmt fp in fact financial yes um all the money that's come through from government i just wondered did you say that's going to cabinet and how do you have a sense of how much difference it will make you know that yes yes so this is it's two parts yes it will go to cabinet and full council in february um in terms of how much difference happening there's there's a little bit of swings and we've got more money than expected and i don't what we have to remember we've not only got more money than expected this year we've got more debt we've got more pressures we expected this year as well so there is it's a little bit of a bit of a see-saw but it is better than we anticipated i think we've mentioned previously that we would anticipate to draw down a reserve the balance of budget for 25 26. we'll still need to do that but to a lesser extent than there was anticipated so but we are still working through the figures in terms of the ntfp great and is there a list of the non-essential changes that you mentioned that like 2.3 million is that available or is that being well they just made within kind of directorate then they're made within directorate and they really are sort of a case-by-case basis so like what might be one they've got a lot of factors have got to be taken to account for example you know whether it's statutory services service but just because the statutory service doesn't mean it's always essential so it really is a question of discretion group direct and the group director having oversight over that over that spendage we also have to take into consideration things like workload and well-being of the staff etc and all those things to be taken into account before that decision is made either not to recruit to a post or not to um spend a certain amount of money because you might think the training is always not essential it's not always essential if someone's operating a dangerous piece of equipment they need to be trained if someone needs to be trained to keep their social work accreditation they need to be trained so it's you know it's very much sort of uh overseen by the group directors and and implemented in a in an informed way access yeah because it tests applied that's really good and then it comes to chat there's probably a question for you i don't just because of news today from some other london boroughs i don't know if is it is the council and i don't know if this i don't think this was in the slides around council chat but are there any changes going to be made to the council tax relief um reductions that people receive with that i think any questions around the potential budget will be as and when i mean council chapman you'd like to answer that i'm quite happy to say that um well first of all there on the um additional funding um we calculate that we've got about and i mean this figures in the ofp it's going to publish tomorrow or something so i'll say about 24 and a half million more than we would have done done under the formula of the last um uh last government so it's substantially there albeit as the director said you know some of it may well be one off but we'll find out that when we when we move towards um longer term funding uh settlements which have been promised that we've said it's next year but we're expecting them from next year um so i mean that's a very substantial increase uh it's very welcome and the minister said that uh you know that he sees that as the first steps towards stabilizing and rebuilding the financial system of the global government i think you'd accept that um however they also recognized tough choices to be made and um as we know um we look for the lgp from last month and we've got 37 million overspend on um you know largely driven by adult children social care and um uh homelessness expenditure so you know it's not we're not out of the woods although it's a huge improvement where we would have been had another bit of challenging government i'll just say like that uh we have no uh right thank you chancellor chapman um members this is uh please be mindful this is a you know we're here as an independent um committee um what i would say as the chair of audit is whilst we obviously have welcomed um impact to the overall budget i think when we go on to doing our deep dive into the transformation i think that's going to be really key for us in terms of that big that big piece of work we need to do about what the council fundamentally does and what the council needs to do to be fit to purpose um regardless of the you know who's in government i think it it links to what's happening with the national government in terms of the sort of um reform of local government you know and all the other sort of big big sort of chunky bits of uh legislation that are being planned um with this new administration and i'm really mindful and i need to be better at chairing um members can i just ask you to note the treasury management activity reports as in appendix one and two and to authorize for the draft treasury management strategy 2025 2026 to 2027 28 uh for submission to council subject to the capital program that has been finalized ahead of the budget report with delegation to our interim group director of finance to approve the final treasury management strategy for submission to council um and also to obviously just note uh what's been uh represented here in terms of the finance update can i get an indication that great meeting members okay thank you great thank you counselor conway um we are now going to go on to uh a bit of a chunky item here which is the climate homes and economy director at risk register the group director of climate homes and economy ricardo hyatt is here he's the lead officer for this and he's also joined by steve waddington who's also in the train chair which is our strategic director of housing services and and gita subram maniam mooney who's our director of environment and climate change hello it's nice to see you online gita um i want it noted that we did as the chair of audit committee i did invite the said cabinet lead um councillor mckenzie but i understand that he's he was not available for tonight's meeting um so ricardo we've got about 20 minutes for this so i am of the expectation that members have read the papers so if you could just give us the headlines and uh i guess focus on what you think are the key things that i've asked the committee to sort of focus on that would be great of course thank you chair and good evening committee members um so uh since i was last in front of the committee um the makers to direct that's changed so back in june of this year of last year um the home that it's a homelessness prevention service transferred into climate homes and economy so you will see and within directorate risk register stock as i'm sure you'd expect um the flashing red risk around and temporary accommodation and which can come onto and pick up any questions you may have um in terms of key risks so linked very much to some of what has already been discussed and covered off by jackie today um given the nature and um structure of the different services across the directorate and we are heavily afflicted by um huge inflationary pressures costs um huge pressures around on not just in terms of temporary accommodation but also in respect of housing services and not frontline services within the directorate um and these are all risks that we're having to manage um in addition to that um i'd just like to point out um specifically um some challenges that we have in relation to you know changing regulations so one of the risks that we've highlighted there is around building safety regulations that certainly impacts um our ability to deliver new homes and impacts the viability of that and then finally there are two or three risks here pertaining to um housing services specifically um and have already been discussed when i presented to this committee before but there are various things that are tracking in regards to and the demand for repairs that some of the challenges that we're facing and meeting that on and the impacts having in regards to financial pressures and there are also um uh impending um an impending report that we're awaiting from the housing ombudsman which we're expecting to be published in the next well as it says in the report um the way that we publish at some point this quarter and then and finally as i've mentioned before and the significant pressure around country accommodation and if you looked at um the detail in the in the risk that you'll see um all of the control measures um that we've got in place to try and mitigate and manage those risks so i'll in the interest of time i'll stop there okay great thank you uh uh counselor selman and it was just wonderful and it was just on the first ningún point in three so contempt that i was a kind of 오ine bond in my community in terms of as regards to that it's a reference to and when So I'll respond as I think of understanding what you're asking so on your first question in regards to that first risk related to customer services I think you mentioned ICT as well but just to say that environmental services is one of those universal frontline services and there are you know lots of inquiries that we get for example you know in the central contact center and the services so there is a lot there in respond to residents expectations in regards to the provision of those services so we're having to constantly keep an eye on the inquiries that we're getting and the volume is significant and it's something that we have to manage but also you know trying to disaggregate between you know what are genuine complaints for the service requests so it is an ongoing and it's an interesting process and you know going forward this is definitely an area in terms of you know the relevant experience work that we're doing by the transformation program that will certainly help us in terms of our response for residents in terms of ICT so there is a risk in here around ICT and certain some specific services have been mentioned and you know I won't go over long history of it some of it does go back to a legacy and impact of the cyber attack and interim systems that still are in place but we do have plans in place to you know procure you know fully integrated systems and housing services on the other side in terms of temporary accommodation I think as Michael who mentioned that again we're looking to have you know improved systems in place from April onwards so again you know it's a work in progress but what's highlighted here are the risks that we're currently contending with um in terms of your second question can you can you repeat that I didn't yeah so it's in that latest notes which we get to deliver in the national project yeah there's a line which um regarding institutional policy sources there was a recent example of pspo and a group that the LCS has also had an email from the parts of community safety budget so this is what it turns out like what what that is what the risk was that that was appropriate so it is what that's saying that are confirmed that there's not like possible or is that there's no ability to deliver this project or is it being flagged up as you know if it's something that we're not expected but they're reactive and often possibly responsible yeah it was just a kind of what that or if it's just an illustration of what happens when you've not got enough resources you've got to go away so you're probably answering the question i'm not sitting on the fence it's probably a combination of all of those things so um you know we do again given the nature of the service do run a lot of consultations um and you know sometimes not sometimes all the time we have to be mindful of you know the capacity and resource that we have in order to undertake those consultations i think there is a link here to the delivery of capital projects where there are things that as well as you know the standards of resident and stakeholder consultation there are things sometimes that we have to respond yeah and if that capacity is already taken up with sort of planned work it becomes really challenging to manage so that's that's what that relates to okay uh thank you uh thank you uh lucas i'm interested on the sort of mitigations part of it you mentioned or rather the pack mentions that the council has set up their ta transformation board um i just wanted to elaborate but it's useful because it gives an outline about what it's doing and what it's trying to work towards but i wonder if you could just give a sense of how long that's been operational for uh who sits on it is it cabinet chairs is it having reds or is it sort of the mainstream um what ultimately is it working towards what are they going to be to which points throughout the year is it feelings for how the work the directors do they yeah so um i'll try to address all of those points um so the uh ta transformation board was set up um earlier in uh this financial year so um around spring final in spring and summertime of 2024 and um it was we've been tracking for some time um uh the increasing demand and you know cost pressures in regards to our and uh owners of service and specifically the rising costs um of temporary accommodation and that materialized in reality in the you know massive job that we saw that we've seen in the forecast of projected overspent um of up to nine and a half million pounds this year so it was felt that we needed to you know put in place a board with uh officer legs so the board is chaired by myself and jackie um sits on the board as well our finance director given you know this is the biggest financial pressure facing the council it's important that the service on the myself as well as the finance team are heavily involved um we also have um the transformation corporate transformation team sit on that board in our housing policy team and sit on that board and come together and think about you know three areas so um uh there's a massive challenge around and cost and demand of ta and you know we face people and there are a number of reasons for that pressure um there's a massive challenge around the income that we get um to cover our costs and by the benefit system for example and then the third element is around supply so um initially and i think jackie alluded to it earlier there are some chunky things i.e in acquisition of additional supply um and that's more affordable and expensive might be paid hotels for example um where if we place people we're able to bring those costs down so um the purpose of the board is to and there are terms of reference as you'd expect are to look at all of those propositions in a um collective and collaborative way across the council and come forward with the solutions i think one of the biggest challenges that we have is around them all so we see where demand has gone and it's still on an upward tick and one of the things that we're doing for example is you know we've commissioned um can we fulfill um uh consultants produce the demand model for us to try and a predictive model to try and determine and plan for the future very difficult though it is um so that's a piece of work that we have on the way and then finally um a key part of it which is the next phase of work is to look at the service itself so you know how do we treat um you know cases and engage with you know clients where they approach us to be housed um you know are we asking the right questions you know are we you know supporting people to find appropriate solutions um so it's quite expansive and what i'm just giving you is a bit of a snatch of all of the different areas but hopefully that gives you um a helpful overview it's really useful just really quickly um you mentioned this kind of all of our key aims for living reports what's your assessment of how you track progress on those kind of five how are you how are you assessing your performances in terms of primary accommodation specifically yeah it's fine i think i think what counselor lucas is asking is is where are we in terms of setting up the board it's all yeah the details great ricardo but what actually are we delivering in terms of yeah i think is that what you're trying to ask absolutely lucas yeah how far along are we doing and what what are the milestones you're working towards with lots of them to fix the problem yeah um i think jackie can correct me here but i think early this year um in the first phase of saving or is it in the second phase the ta uh first phase perhaps that isn't the problem to make so um there was a there is a an approved um savings proposal um of a million pounds a year um from the ta um expenditure um that we have as a saving or you know cost avoidance and that we have committed to make in reality you know given the pressures we're going to have to go much further well i can't say too much at the moment because you know there are um certain things that are going to be going through the system that will be presented in the budget um in february but what i can say is we have been actively um you know taking forward acquisitions for example and we're not waiting for certain points um through the year by you know the annual approval of the budget to pay for those propositions we're taking updates to the monthly um out turn or sorry financial update report that goes to the cabinet so we've been in negotiation behind the scenes to acquire you know a number of blocks um of accommodation and we've been looking at um for example where we can increase um uh the level of uh rents from uh currently paid the local housing allowance caps at 2011 to 2024 that again will enable us to you know reduce our subsidy loss so um there are a number of you know things that are working towards but just to flag that that main one is that saving proposal that has already been approved okay i i'm just about to bring in councillor garber i think it's really uh i think for those uh watching and i think for all of us just to remind ourselves around i keep calling them the big three which are basically our statutory duties and um just to sort of you know uh technically local authorities the reason why temporary accommodation is such a pressure is because of that you know prevention and relief duties that local authorities have um along with our statutory duty to care for our most vulnerable adults and for our children as well and i think um the sort of focus on ta is is there uh because we have to deliver it so you know that sort of you know we have to so i think for us as a nordic committee we need to be incredibly focused on where the other spend is going because that that's for me is sort of everything really should be focused on and what we have a statutory duty to do um um so thank you for that question because i think that's really important because there needs to be that um that rigged my my just question here is i am mindful that there's this board there's then that sort of recovery board that our chief exec um you talked about jackie is i just sort of for us as an audit committee we just have been absolutely clear that there is this is a clear sort of governance and where this all goes because we don't want to just bury ourselves there's lots of committees lots of boards and i'm wondering whether or not this might be picked up in this deep dive within the transformation because that's why i've asked for this to happen because i i for myself and i think for our residents need to understand there's lots of stuff happening but actually what what actually is this meeting with a wider sort of you know plans for this council jackie can i do you want to answer that then i will bring you in councillor garbert so it's the cfs corbett leachy team sits as the over the transformation role but obviously that can't um have oversight of the level of detail that you need to have oversight over to move some of these things forward so effectively it's almost like a highlight reporting and it does have deep dives into the different um transformations going on this one in particular which which um which which um ricardo shares does feed into that transformation board but it's it's also it's i'm going to say kind of wouldn't you excuse me it's actually quite operational as well because and it's not you know we we track things through the board but it's on a daily basis that we're doing this up to trying to move these things forward and what that does is bring bring some structure to it and make sure we're doing things in a timely manner as fast as we can because you can get blockages and it's really helpful to have that that meeting once a month on the transformation board a formal meeting to sort of unblock these things but in terms of the deep dive i'm sure that kieran and comfort is out in government structure more clearly for the whole transformation program i think just finally before i bring councillor garbert in and i think um some of the stuff that you've talked about are well around some of the sort of uh discipline that's been brought in for me i would uh would would welcome that we sort of keep some of the practices so even though it looks like we're getting a new government with new money there's some practices that we've we've had to sort of do which you may want to sort of uh think about what probably should have made could have been in place when you think about the you know certainly around some of the recruitment controls there has been it that has impacted hasn't it in in terms of some of the money that has come from that cancer garbert i know you've been patiently waiting and i'm above time so i apologize because i'm making it worse as well yeah but from a kind of how people are doing physically with their physical or mental health which i know you've noted here and that the living in hackney scrutiny commissioner reporting their letter so i'll pick up the actions of the letter and my question is so i was interested to see that at page 63 under the 6.3 the description of the council of property repairs didn't mention the new contract and the impact that that's happened because i understand and you know the risk register on page 73 also noted that in connection to the contract of cumulative risk that there's risk continues about the delay to the housing planned maintenance contracts so i just thought that i just wanted if you could speak to how the change in the contract has had any impact on the repairs steve would you like to answer that because that's the government thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for the main challenge on the delay on the capital contracts is that that places additional demand on the revenue of statistics to carry out of repairs because obviously united which is carrying out of the planning process on the plan trump and so that places the demand and requirement on the revenue of the repairs so actually what you find in the pays the delay in the capital program is part of the reason for the increased toll time in forms of repairs it's also more costly to do things the one-off the days to give it to that problem and did the procurement because i know that the um uh companies carrying out their repairs changed at some point last year like maybe even to three was two or three um and just i thought that from what i'm getting from residents like some people's repairs are being delayed and they're saying and i thought it was to do with this kind of changeover in in we had uh one single main uh support contracts for building maintenance and that contract came to an end to the end um we were going through a new process unfortunately uh and there was some mitigation delay now so the results of the uh those new contracts are obviously and as as quickly as we were right what we have done though as well is we have gone from more contractor to four contractors so perhaps we're splitting the work between contractors uh which gives us a great spread of uh of capacity and that will result to be something that will eventually straighten out straight now we have two main contractors and two small contractors one of the main contractors is now fully otherwise second one we expect to be more like we expect so more of us that we're doing then there's just more of that too thank you steve i can just see ricardo wanted to come in there as well it was just to quickly add um as well it's worth bearing in mind that um through the autumn and winter it's the busiest time of the year for service as well so as well as the mobilization of you know contractors through that period um we were probably certainly since i've been here the last two and a half years year on year we're probably doing more repairs than ever so um that's you know it's worth bearing that in mind as well as a factor right thank you members councilor rathbone yeah sorry so i've just been struggling with i think councilor someone might mention about this but um yesterday i'm reading for the news news had a news item saying council brought a new housing management system and um because as it tries to address the damage from a cyber attack four years ago i'm just a little bit surprised although i don't like to be in my ignorance i thought we already had bought a new housing system after the cyber attack in 2022 so has that system failed i know i know that on page 63 you mentioned about failure of the ict infrastructure which i find quite alarming but after four years um you know we're still saying we're suffering from from the the cyber attack when i understood that we'd i mean obviously there are still going to be some after effects and enough completely uh council took 11 years to recover as far as i understand it but um you know surely this is a major item of what we do and i'll be saying that our problems also in the certainly i've identified in the last year or two of housing repairs and backlogs and things like that is that to do with the fact that we are still suffering from that cyber attack um i just want to make a point and i have raised this and i'm going to use my chair's privilege on this is that i um i i i i think raised that i've wished all members to be notified if there's going to be external press reports we shouldn't be having to read stuff in the press so i just wanted to make that comment um that i haven't wasn't aware of that press article um and uh it's just something i'm going to make as my chair's privilege to be to use this to say that i am tired of reading about hackney stuff uh or being sent links about issues with hackney without us being given any briefings around it so it's just going to put that out there now ricardo would you like to come back on that um yeah so um i think so there's a number of links to this and i'm sure you know steve as well so um it is right to say that you know housing services and it's probably one of those services that have been you know more so impacted that by many others since a cyber attack now the council um you know prior to the cyber attack had a strategy of building its own system that had been agreed i think as far back as 2017. yes um through the pandemic um or coming out of the pandemic we did have a repairs backlog about 7 000 repairs that we didn't manage to get through but that's not solely because of you know the the lack of an effective system so it is worth bearing that in mind that there are other factors as well but when when the um cyber attack happened the system that the council was using um universal housing so i'm going into detail a bit but it's important for context um uh the the um uh the supplier of that and system determined that it would no longer be updating it so the council would have had to replace this system anyway so there's a number of there are a number of factors coming together i mean they're a commercial company they can you know make these decisions um so it's created a bit of a perfect stall from the council so effectively um in order to you know continue to deliver um uh housing services you've had to have a number of workarounds um i am pleased to say um that um last year and we got the green light from um uh cabinet procurement and in insourcing committee to go forward with a sorry integrated housing system and we have um signed the contract on the contract and are in the in the process of agreeing the phased implementation of that so um we're not waiting for that though in the interim we have looked at how we can improve sort of interim systems there's a big part around data and you know understanding um um you know who's living in the properties and you know where the assets are so we've been wrapping up all of those challenges but you know there are mitigations and demands in place hopefully that hopefully yeah uh thank you uh councillor raspberry i think what that's that's pulled out is i think there's something around looking at work when we do do procurements that we are making sure that we're procuring uh people that aren't going to do things such as you've described um so again people be mindful of their responsibilities sitting on the procurement and in sourcing committee uh with that uh members can i ask you to just um note the contents of the report and the attached risk registers and the controls in place noted thank you thank you ricardo thank you steve and can i also just get a quick thank you to matthew who's just redesigned all of these risk registers i know you're just about to come in and go through the corporate respects to jim matthew powell but i think it was uh worthwhile to for me visually i find this much more better members have noted as well it's a much better risk register in terms of how it's done uh matthew uh you're here as the lead officer um but the corporate risk register obviously sort of sits with the chief exec who is not able to be here today because i just want to make that point that you're obviously here just to sort of deliver it but obviously the overall stuff sits with the uh clt and as the chief exec but matthew if you could just uh go through what you think are the key things for us to sort of look at that'd be great thank you thanks yeah evening all uh yeah so the corporate risk register um just to provide an overview we've got 17 risks from this first and thirdly storage are at red status and the four of amazon uh the first risk risk remains on the image principal relating to the very serious challenges the current financial situation it's creating again this relates to information if you take the presentation earlier we're going to understand 37 million requires say you use the 67 million over the next three years these figures are causing severe pressures and uncertainties all they work is well underway across many areas some managers on the other risk for example the unique spending control measures so the risk here is all about the overall financial decision um and this is a theme reflected throughout the register uh living for the risks um some of the other risks for example example accommodation which again we've spoken about illustrates why resources are becoming tighter with every increasing spend being required of the unsustainable levels um in terms of the risks relating to climate checking service which actually did also fall in the regardless uh uh this risk um compared to the last iteration has been completely very comfortable with the controls revised and however the risk is detailed and uh charging uh charges from the council to meet its climate and ecological commitments uh one of the hackney education risks which was on the last version has now been de-escalated back to the direction level uh this was the risk related to issues with synergy software which does remain under review but is no longer considered to be uh uh but that's a very good express to all of you today so thank you matthew uh i think we've fully covered the big burning platform which is ta uh does anybody else have anything uh about cats or lucas that you wanted to say thank you for the interesting uh update and i want to i know we've spoken about tonight around cyber security and it seems to be an ongoing theme but i'm really interested in um the final points on page 87 around going to the ai and how you know as we go forward but i know you screen that's email the government has released it's saying ai actually is actually one which is essentially around rather than that then i'll be doing the public sector and make sure we're doing more productive but also makes it easier to do after you know walking more forward so i'm interested in this item there's a cue to hear that maybe another day really on i know you mentioned here and there's some guidance issue to staff and how you can use it uh i just believe that you could elaborate on that slightly how this is being kind of planned within the context of the plan information um and to everything the council does and how we can use it safely but also effectively so i think it's as we go forward this is a wonderful thing for yourself to speak isn't it i am speaking yeah good evening everyone um ai is the topic right now and actually it has been the topic across local government and central government for the last two to three years and it's not just about giving a policy to our workforce i think if you look at it from a local government perspective it's about making sensible decisions as to when we would be building our own ai so how we would use it implemented from an operational standpoint and when we would work with suppliers who are already working with us to deliver some services what we are doing within the transformation program is testing all of those so we've in the last two months tested using the google's ai solution which is gemini which is just coming back again microsoft will use something like touch gpt you probably heard a lot about all of that and there's been a myth that if we use ai we then lose our valuable data into the cloud and others could do it but with the help of technology we can put barriers that our data doesn't go anywhere else but all of this ai only works really well if we have good quality data if we don't have good quality data all the ai is doing is it's just churning bad stuff quicker we probably get there eventually but it's doing it in seconds um so what we're doing right now is being sensible about where we use ai so could we use it to summarize meetings could we use it for social workers to quickly do some notes so there's an ai called magic notes that some councils are using we're working very closely with london office of technology and innovation and the department of science and technology one is all local government and the other one is central using energies and everything where all of these different products are being tried and tested so we can learn from other people's mistakes and we can probably stay with pride on how they are actually implementing those solutions within their area we're working with colleagues like data where we can look at specific ai tools which offer specific services like an ai tool for parking which can probably make decisions on pcns and tell the officer that we've done this work so you can then just check everything before you issue it out we're looking at again ai which is more around planning so that's something that most of the councils actually use so all of the planning decisions it goes into this ai tool that this company holds it's got like around eight or nine million planning application decisions that it can base its findings on and then it can say that if it's this particular application you probably should be considering this factors which makes our productivity and our processing time better if we can use ai what we are doing is working with colleagues looking at specific and then looking at the generic stuff but the most important thing is working with the service areas to get them to understand why maintaining good data quality is important if you want to use ai and how do we carry out penetration testing when we are doing this kind of work and working with decent we want to bring in a framework that will actually help us challenge the third parties who are going to give us ai solution that they are doing the due diligence of getting the cyber assurance and making sure that our data doesn't get released there so recently the most cyber thing is nobody's going to attack us as a council because attackers are not glued up that we are glued up what they will do is attack the smaller ones you know the smaller companies who are coming up with all these new products but probably don't have the means to have massive cyber security foundations in place so for us it's to use that framework to check that we are working with the suppliers who actually understand the risks that are attached and are doing sufficient are putting sufficient measures in place so we're doing a range of things and we'll be reporting all of this against you know the transformation board and that will again get into the deep dive it's going to be part of the whole digital strategy uh but again it's not just ai it's also the chatbots it's automations if we want to use robotics and we're going to be bringing in that kind of discipline for all of it and create more like a center of excellence so that we're very clear and there'll be some elements where we might want to do our own ai as well don't have the skills right now but that's the north star that's where we want to get to eventually okay thank you so much rohana i think as well the way that you uh so eloquently described that and put sort of sort of real life examples is was really useful for us as members um members can i see anything else more in regard to uh the corporate risk register so i'm just going to say i'm really happy to see stability and staffing that's really positive to see that that's becoming more stable and i just had one quick comment and i know we've talked about the budget and it's good to hear that this is a new format but i was quite alarmed to see that around the budget that the impact of the risk is catastrophic and the likelihood is almost certain i just thought that was pretty concerning racing exactly yeah i mean i would imagine imagine i'd expect this if you were to look at a lot of councils because you see a similar similar picture and what you have to remember when we're looking at this then the risk register and rating is risk we're doing it very much in the context that we do not know what our food funder levels are so we know what we where we are for 25 26 we know we know we believe we're setting a reasonable budget for next year we've we've made a proper allocation because those the risks that we perceive that we've got around ca and adult social care but we've also seen haven't we over the last year they can exceed expectations so we really have got to keep it under close and we have to be honest with ourselves in that you know the the the 11 demands we're under are almost they're up almost unprecedented in relation to those things we have to keep a close eye on it i mean what we don't want to be doing is issuing a section 114 notice so we need to make sure we keep a close eye on it and if we do need to get exceptional financial support from government then we'll then we'll know when we need to do that so i think it's really important to understand that we're sort of completely registered in that in that period of real sort of a lot of uncertainty and a lot of pressure on our demand i think we'd be helping to a certain extent we'll be putting our heads in the sound if we didn't yeah absolutely but can i just bring councillor chapman did you finish jackie yeah councillor yeah thank you chair i think we have to see um the language and the risk register as a sort of proxy for just how important we see you know uh tapping in the financial challenge we've got um and although there's a difficult decision to head you know we've got a bit more money but there's difficult decisions ahead uh we still fundamentally believe that having you know a strong stable finances or a strong state with we get is absolutely essential to um you're under right uh all we do in service delivery even though we're probably you know we're inevitably going through reducing services at a lower level yeah that's what it's going to be but uh proper financial control stability is essential for delivery and um thank you captain um so can we note the contents of the report and attached registers and the controls in place thank you thank you thank you okay we now also have uh the performance up there again it's uh matthew powell is the lead officer for this report um and we are asked to consider the risk management scorecards appendix one and current capital monitoring update appendix two matthew i'm mindful that some of this is going to be quite repetitive of some of the wider things that were probably covered in jackie's report so again if you could be so there's three um tendencies within the reports and um two of them or one of them is is the scorecard which we've just discussed on the corporate register um by jackie in the finance presentation so i guess the name is something act here for the performance support bruce i can just see you because there's tvs behind you so apologies bruce um would you like bruce deville uh uh would you like to add anything to this it's got a number of issues in there but i think you've covered the main ones when um um and some of the changes um so i think the main the main areas of those are uh questions um just to say that we are finalizing um the new form of framework for the council um following the uh yeah i think uh thank you for that bruce i think it's just mindful as well just to remind members as well that we have our uh much awaited uh lga peer review application and i wonder if that may give some granular detail and also some direction regarding the whole the whole the whole thing um i think can we just consider it and any is there anything that wants to add at this point before we move on to um uh to the final agenda item uh which is our work program um and just to note the proposed work program so our next meeting is in uh april is this right yes yes it's sorry yeah um and we have all what we do have is we obviously have the sort of standing agenda items um but we are going to have the risk register for children and education and gosh this is going to be is this also uh the risk register for adults health and integration um and we're also going to have the deep dives as well um for me um i'm going to do what i did today so i'm going to extend an invitation to the cabinet leads for those particular um portfolios as well because uh i think it's really important to have them here to support their directors as well and they are the subject matter experts on those particular cabinet portfolios um and then the next meeting uh after that would be uh i haven't got the dates there uh members do anyone want to add anything to this i just wanted to add in terms of the deep dives i have actually very just today just picked up an email just to confirm some dates uh for the deep dive uh into revenues and also for the transformation so um i'm going to be absolutely honest i'm going to look uh rob because we just need to get this done uh i would ask you to if possible i will i would i should imagine humara's already expertly just did a sense check that there shouldn't be any clashes already uh if we could uh if we could uh uh prioritize those in our diaries as well that would be really good because i think council garber and myself experienced when we did a excellent deep dive around uh the capital budgets we had to sort of repeat it because of low attendance so i just wanted to remind people of their responsibilities as audit committee members and elected councillors in terms of engaging within these deep dives um i just want to go to any other urgent business before we close there's been no notification of any items of urgent business but i i would be failing if i wasn't to acknowledge that our interim group director jacques morley and this is her last audit um committee so if you would uh allow me uh i just wanted to say a few words and i think some members might want to say a few words and we have got a little something for you as well um and i'm really mindful i'm just going to check my phone because i'm really mindful that jackie is missing something this evening uh which i will come on to uh i think she's a bit happy though it's okay uh jackie moylan uh council chapman you might want to say a few words as well i mean jackie's been a long-standing member of the council she's been there still uh she's very well regarded and respected within the council and externally as well um one thing i would say about jackie she's just one of our best report writers and i know from sort of speaking to jackie that her uh ability to sort of uh articulate verbally and um in written form around finances has been an exceptional help to me um and also you know you're really hard working you're really diligent you're really fair you you're everything that you'd want in in an officer and i am going to miss you greatly but hopefully we'll still keep in touch um whether or not that's to sort of banter about the football um i'm really pleased that i looked at the score so uh just to say i think we should know is that jackie is actually missing a game tonight to be here at audit committee um but we have got you as a company and a little card which i will give you after as well um and i just open the floor if anybody else wants to make a quick uh a quick uh sort of contribution to jackie as well councillor chapman did you want to say something i know there's going to be lots of speeches but well obviously yeah this marks um jackie's last attendance at the audit committee i think so obviously your words are very welcome i completely adults and obviously there's a huge support for people personally and the whole council and all the time i've been in the role on which was the future i mean i have another opportunity i no doubt to say nice things about about her but she actually does leave on at the end of february and i couldn't i can't resist just pointing out it's quite a lot to do between now and you know i completely endorse something that says thank you very much thank you and just before though um as as we say this one sort of person enters somebody's coming is usually joining us so i just wanted to formally as chair uh audit committee uh we will be welcoming naeem ahmad who is coming back to the to the family of hackney as well and we obviously look forward to working with him and we will obviously welcome him uh at our next audit committee so without further ado uh thank you all for attending online thank you for all attending the chamber and i formally close this meeting thank you so much

Transcript