Issue - meetings
Annual Governance Statement
Meeting: 26/06/2019 - Governance & Audit Committee (Item 7)
7 Annual Governance Statement PDF 213 KB
To present the Committee with the Annual Governance Statement for 2018/19, update the Committee on progress against the Action Plan agreed in June 2018 and to make recommendations for further actions arising from the report.
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Sanjay Prashar, Borough Solicitor, attended the Committee and presented a summary of the Annual Governance Statement for 2018/19.
Members were directed to the Executive Summary which reported on the effectiveness of the Council’s governance arrangements during 2018/19 and took note of a diagram of the overview of the Council’s governance framework.
The statement included a summary of assurance for each of the seven principles on which the Statement was based, which were:
- Behaving with Integrity, demonstrating strong commitment to ethical values, and respecting the rule of law
- Ensuring openness and comprehensive stakeholder engagement
- Defining outcomes in terms of sustainable economic, social and environmental benefits
- Determining the interventions necessary to optimise the achievement of the intended outcomes
- Developing the entity’s capacity, including the capability of its leadership and the individuals within it
- Managing risks and performance through robust internal control and strong public financial Management
- Implementing good practices in transparency, reporting and audit, to deliver effective accountability
The progress to address 3 important governance improvement areas from 2017/18 were highlighted:
PROPOSED ACTION: Continue to take a proactive approach to counter fraud and whistle blowing, promoting the Council’s policies and focussing internal audit activity on areas of high risk.
UPDATE: Fraud Newsletters now produced regularly. Seven fraud awareness training Sessions open to all staff already held in quarter 4 of 2018/19.
PROPOSED ACTION: Review by Standards Framework Working Group of the efficacy of introducing specific requirements in the Councillor Code of Conduct relating to the use of social media.
UPDATE: Social Media Training including in Member Development Programme agreed by Member Development Charter Working Group.
PROPOSED ACTION: To undertake a review of current compliance with GDPR and take any remedial steps as necessary (6 month post implementation review).
UPDATE: Compliance activity undertaken by DPO and IMG against action plan.
Update provided to CMT in December 2018.
Sanjay advised the Committee that the key action points – and their owner – for the year ahead were:
- Refresh Council Plan and Director Service Plans (CMT).
- Keep Corporate Business Continuity Management Plan updated and communicate this across the Council (Service Manager, Emergency Planning).
- Review Strategic Risk Register to align with manifesto commitments (Head of Audit & Risk Management).
- Directorate Risk Registers to be put in place for all directorates reflecting new structure (Directors).
- Update Information Governance procedures (Data Protection Officer).
- Submit 2019/20 NHS Date Security and Protection Toolkit (Data Protection Officer).
- Cross Council Information Asset Register and Data Retention/Disposal schedules to be updated to improve records management regime (Data Protection Officer).
- Ensure provision of induction training for new Members (Head of Democratic & Registration Services).
- Monitoring of actions to address common areas of weakness (CMT).
- Monitoring of all limited assurance audit reports (DMTs).
In response to questions from Members, Sanjay Prashar, Borough Solicitor advised the Committee that:
- Three training sessions were planned on Code of Conduct for Members which Sanjay would be running.
- Members and officer relations training had taken place which was well attended. Councillor Peter Heydon said this training had been ... view the full minutes text for item 7