Issue - meetings

To receive the report of the Strategic Director for Corporate Resources.

The Strategic Director for Corporate Resources presented the report making the following points:

·         this report related to 2024/25, was statutory,  and accompanies the statement of accounts, based on the code of corporate governance;

·         the difference was that it reflected significant weaknesses as identified by internal auditor; and

·         one key issue was debt management after officers had requested an advisory review.

The Chief Executive and Strategic Director for Corporate Resources responded to Members questions in the following terms:

·         the role of scrutiny would be updated in the report for the next year;

·         Ombudsman complaints were reported to the Audit and Governance Committee;

·         the corporate risk register was reviewed regularly by the Strategic Management Board(SMB) who discussed issues with Heads of Service;

·         SMB held strategic responsibility for ensuring the correct resources were allocated to risks but Heads of Service held operational responsibility for addressing risks and feeding back to Directors;

·         this was a summary not every item which SMB and OMB were responsible for; and

·         OMB mitigated strategic and operational risks.

RESOLVED following a unanimous vote that the Audit and Governance Committee supports the Annual Governance Statement to be included within the Council’s Annual Statement of Accounts for 2024/25; and

RECOMMENDED that Council notes and approves the Annual Governance Statement to be included within the Council’s Annual Statement of Accounts for 2024/25.