Audit and Governance Committee - Wednesday 4 December 2024, 6:00pm - Folkestone & Hythe webcasting

Audit and Governance Committee
Wednesday, 4th December 2024 at 6:00pm 

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  1. Cllr Liz McShane
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Cllr Liz McShane - 0:00:03
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the meeting of the Audit and Governance Committee
and the last one of this year.
This meeting will be webcast live to the internet.
For those who do not wish to be recorded or filmed, you'll need to leave the chamber.
For members, officers, and others speaking at the meeting, it is important that the microphones
are used so viewers on the webcast and others in the room may hear you.
Would anyone with a mobile phone please switch it to silent mode as they can be distracting.
I would like to remind members that although we all have strong opinions on matters under
consideration it is important to treat members, officers and public speakers with respect.
Thank you.
So can we go to agenda item number one, declarations of interest.

1 Declarations of Interest

Any?
Councillor Butcher.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:00:52
Thanks chair to declare an interest as director of opportunities.
Councillor Wang.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:00:57
Yes, also Director of Opportunities.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:00:59
Cllr John Wing - 0:00:59
Also Director of Opportunities.
Okay.

2 Apologies for Absence

Cllr Adrian Lockwood - 0:01:05
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:01:06
Moving on to number two, apologies for absence.
Thank you, Chair.
We haven't received any apologies.
Do we have any apologies for lateness, Councillor Wimble?
No, we don't know anything?
Mr Alex Baker - 0:01:14
We'll wait and see.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:01:17
Moving on to Agenda Item 3, minutes from the last meeting, pages 7 to 10 of the pack.

3 Minutes

Can we, any comments on the meeting, on the minutes?
We happy to consider and approve them? Can I have a show of hands? Oh, can I have a proposer?
Seconder? Thank you, Councillor Ring. Councillor Lockwood was the proposer. And can I have

4 Quarterly Internal update Report from the Head of East Kent Audit Partnership

a show of hands? So unanimous. Thank you. Agenda Item 4, the quarterly internal update
report from the head of East Kent Audit Partnership. Can I say? Okay, Chris, over to you. Thank
you.
Thank you, Chair. The report before you on page 11 is the regular East Kent Audit Partnership
update showing the work that's been completed with the internal audit reviews. If I can
take you to page 15, it shows the main reports that have been completed in the period. There
being five in total. These coming out at four substantial assurances and one reasonable
limited assurance. The reasonable limited assurance was in respect of high swimming
pool and that's shown on page 19 and 20. I would mention that on page 20 there is a management
response regarding the limited aspect of the review and also just to say that at the end
of the internal audit reviews that are undertaken we don't necessarily always agree or the client
officers may not necessarily always agree with the audit findings. I would say in this
case the audit recommendations that are attached to the report have been agreed by management.
Moving further down on page 20 this shows the three follow -ups that have been completed,
two coming out at a substantial and one reasonable, so no causes for concern there.
And then on page 25 this shows the audit plan completion to the half year stage.
And just to bring you up to date for the figures, to the end of November 24 the plan completion
is 63 % against the target of 67.
So it's just slightly behind and hopefully that will be catching up over the next couple
of months.
Those are the main highlights of the report and we'll be pleased to take any questions
you may have.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chris.
Any questions or comments from the committee?
Councillor Butcher.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:03:50
Cllr James Butcher - 0:03:53
It's just to pick up on the high swimming pool that Chris was talking about and whether
we could just have a bit of an expansion on the officer response.
comments.
Andrew Rush - 0:04:09
Thank you chair. Yes, I've just got a few
comments to make and I would like to just say that generally
in very much always in agreement with our audit colleagues and do
value their opinion and as Chris has said, we will be implementing
as far as we can all the recommendations from the audit. I
few sort of observations, we feel or I feel that some of the recommendations were not
directly linked to the ordered scope originally and some of the critical recommendations that
come out of it haven't, in my opinion, been fully supported.
I can go into that in some further detail if you wish.
Some of the assessment of risk is disproportionate and slightly inflated and doesn't really
bear reality.
And lastly, we have some general commentary,
which is in itself fine, but has been
sort of developed into an audit control, which needed,
should we say, more testing, at least some reference back
to management before it went into the final report.
So just on the first item, and it's
in the first bullet point about the situation with the staffing at the pool.
I felt quite strongly about this.
The report suggests that...
The actual finding of the report related to a control related to lifeguarding,
for which the pool was tested and found to pass
and actually lifeguarding training was very comprehensive.
But in addition to that, the auditor pointed out
that the pools had to close due to staff shortage
and that management should review this and should risk assess this,
as it was putting a strain on staff.
Unfortunately, there was no reference back to management on this point.
Management could have quite reasonably pointed out
that we are very much aware of the staff shortages.
The closure of the pool is actually, in some ways,
a safety control, because I have directly empowered the pool
manager to feel that they are enabled to close the pool
if staffing is not adequate, so that we do not
put the public or staff at risk.
And that this shortage of staff, which
has been a shortage of lifeguards in particular, which
which has been a national issue since the pandemic,
has affected many, many leisure centres.
And we had put in place a number of measures.
We had not, as seen, as suggested by the report,
targeted the employment of zero -hour staff
over permanent staff, we had in fact advertised
for permanent posts almost constantly since 2021.
We had advertised in a much more wider way to attract staff,
including into schools and colleges.
And as a sort of last resort,
we'd actually introduced apprenticeship schemes
to get young people trained so that we could essentially grow your own.
Which is difficult with Hive Pool because it's quite a deep pool.
It's about three metres deep, so not everyone can become a lifeguard there.
So a lot had gone on to actually meet that girl,
but none of that came out in the report.
Now, to be fair, it did allow me to put that comment into the report,
but obviously that is not seen by anyone.
I feel particularly sensitive about this
because we had to close the pool on several occasions.
and we did attract quite a degree of criticism for that.
And there was always, why don't you just employ more staff?
And we had to go through this with the aqua club and others
to say, no, this is the actual situation.
So I feel quite strongly on that.
The inflation of risk ratings, I would say again, largely,
many of the risk ratings I do agree with,
But there are some absurd examples of risks being added
for reasons I don't fully understand.
For example, a vending machine out in the...
which is no longer there, I'd add.
A vending machine which was inert, unpowered, had no food, no money,
could not topple, was not blocking an exit or entrance or fire escape,
is not a risk, but is a risk in the report.
And there's a few examples of that.
And the last thing is this general commentary, again,
unreferenced, talking about the...
basically the state of the changing rooms
and the money put into the pool.
Now, I think holding the pool responsible for the state of the changing rooms
is a little unfair.
But I would say, there's no context around about the investment that Council has put
into the pool.
A lot of it is effectively unseen, including the roof, the electrics, but even this year,
about £30 ,000 for new filters and pumps and unfortunately due to the nature of the age
of the building, a lot of the money goes into just keeping it going rather than improving
it.
The pool itself is subsidized by the General Fund
for around about 250, 250 ,000 to 300 ,000 pounds a year
in itself.
So to put in the report that the changing
rooms and the lack of investment in the pool,
I think there's a broader, wider context that
could be added to that.
But the...
Yeah, I'll probably just leave it there on that matter.
I think I've already said enough. Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. That was really helpful to get your explanation.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:10:51
Sorry if I missed it, but there were just a couple of bullet points there
about VAT and stock takes and contract arrangements,
some practical things about how things are managed.
Is there anything you wanted to respond on that?
Andrew Rush - 0:11:07
As I said, there are many bits of the talk that we did agree with
and we will be implementing.
The contract management, a complete list,
there's about four or five contracts
and yes, it would be helpful to have a full list of those.
Many of them are one -off contracts and certain supplies,
but certain critical supplies.
The issue around, they talk about the proof, fees,
and charges.
I can't give the exact example, but there
was basically the pool had halved.
I think you could get 60 minutes for three lifeguards,
and they sort of said someone asked for a rate of 30 minutes
or something.
And they'd essentially halved that.
So it wasn't particularly serious.
But yes, it was not.
There's a change from the fees and charges.
But that sort of thing happens.
you are working with a business, I know we are a local authority but we are also trying
to run a leisure centre as well. So I don't disagree with those but I wouldn't necessarily
regard them to be particularly high high risks.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:12:16
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:12:18
Yeah I'll just pick up on that, I've got to simply be what Mr Rush is
Cllr David Godfrey - 0:12:22
saying. It comes
was no surprise that I was a big advocate of Prince's parade but that's history now.
However, all through that time we've been patching up hive porn and patching up hive
porn and patching up hive porn and I think we have to be aware you can only repair an
old coat so many times and that can't go on for much longer. I'll leave you with that.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:12:47
Any other comments? Chris would you like to come back or respond? No? No? Ok. Just one
I'm just thinking in light of the situation of folks in the sports centre, obviously,
you know, the context of this as well is quite important, isn't it, to sort of, we've got
two facilities that are question mark, hopefully not.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:13:10
Would somebody like to, we've got to receive a note of the report, a note of the results
of the work carried out by the East Kent audit partnership.
Can I have a proposer please?
Councillor Wing and a seconder.
Councillor Godfrey, thank you.
And can we have a show of hands?
That's unanimous.
So moving on to agenda item five,

5 Extension of term of office of Independent Member

which is the extension of term of office
of the independent member.
Andy Van Buren, it's been agreed that his term will
be extended to March 25.
Lydia, would you like to say anything?
No.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:13:49
Lydia Morrison - 0:13:55
I'm happy to remain as your independent person and happy to
take that extension. Of course it has to go to full
council for accreditation.
So we have to ask a straightforward item then, so
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:14:08
we just have to receive a note.
The report and recommend it to full council can have a
proposal please. Council Gough, it's your turn. Thank you.
Seconder? Councillor Lockwood, thank you.
Can I have a show of hands?
Okay, unanimous. Brilliant.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:14:29
Moving on to item number six,

6 Risk Management Policy and Strategy 2025-26 (Draft)

the risk management policy and strategy,
and that's on pages 35 to 64 of the pack.
So over to you, Jonathan. Thank you.
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:14:43
Thank you, Chair and good evening, members.
The report presented to you tonight,
there's a couple of parts to it.
One is an update to the corporate risk
register which you will be used to
receiving and secondly you've got
a draft policy and strategy and
bringing this to you at this stage
because I value your comments and
opinions on it, it still needs some work,
but I'd like to present this to you
with the state it's in at the moment.
If I may, I will begin by highlighting some changes to the risk register and perhaps take
any questions on the register at that point, but then I would like the opportunity to talk
through some of the main points around the policy and strategy as well.
If you look at page 36 in the pack, what I'll do is just pinpoint some of the key changes,
couple of things that I want to draw your attention to.
One is the addition of a new risk for the EU entry exit system.
I've got the description of risk worked clearly on the page there.
We've set this quite a high risk at this stage.
There's a lot that we don't know about when this is all going to happen, but you note
that we've given it a high risk of 12,
a severe impact, potential impact,
on the grounds that it could affect loss of service
for a significant period,
or failure to deliver a statutory function.
And of course, there's a lot of unknowns here,
but I think it's better that we set this quite high risk
than under -restaurating the level of risk.
And the actions we put in place will, of course,
work to lessen the likelihood of that occurring.
We know some of the actions we got in place already are around.
Generally they're around working with communities that have most likely to be affected based on previous road incidents that we've had over the past year,
and there's more work to be done around business continuity planning with the council.
So this is something that it's likely to fluctuate, but we want to highlight this as a new and emerging risk.
There are some other changes that the report notes.
The other key one that I want to flag with you.
If you look at page 38.
And we've put in there a new risk C18
for English devolution white paper.
So this is to do with the local government reorganisation
identified in the autumn budget and how this may affect local
government structure and spending.
It is an emerging risk.
We don't really know much more about it and there's because plans aren't finalized at this stage
So I think this is going to need to be worked up a little bit more
In terms of understanding that the full impact of that on the council
So at this stage, it's just been put into the register as a flag and we need to pick that up
later on as
usual you'll find attached to the end of the report as an appendix on page 43 and 44
is your overview matrix which shows you the hierarchy of risks and dashboard as well,
which will highlight any of the changes.
Just to refresh
all our memories the
scoring on there is about tolerance. So where something is within tolerance where we want it to be.
It's got a green tick and some it's outside tolerance where we're requiring more work.
We've put that as a red in this sort of traffic light.
You'll see the changes.
Right towards the end page 46.
The two new risks are added to the bottom and you'll see that
there is a change in one of the risks.
C18 has been reduced in risk as well.
Have you just take any questions on the register before we
have a look at the strategy?
Thank you and just once again, just the dashboard.
We love the dashboard.
It just makes it so much, you know, a lot easier to kind of have a good overview of
everything in one place and it's just quite, you know, quite quickly.
So thank you for presenting it like this.
Any questions from the committee?
Oh, sorry.
I've got it.
I would have deferred to change but...
Yeah, I'm not surprised to see the EESS domain, I don't think it's quite right.
Not quite sure about the termination of the cost of living element
because I think that's going to come back and bite us anyway.
One way or the other whether it's energy costs or something else but...
I understand why you're suggesting that should come out.
As I say, I expect we may be putting it back in within a two short to two at a time, however we'll wait and see.
Other than that, I think it's a great report and I'm quite happy with it. Thank you.
Any other comments?
Councillor Lockwood.
Thanks for the report, very thorough and very helpful and clear.
Just on C1, organisational capacity,
The full council last week, Jim Martin said,
the council's working well, so why have we got,
why are we off target on
occupational capacity?
That doesn't add up.
Perhaps we need to look at this one in more detail.
Obvious, I can read you, if you like to.
The workforce, as you know, we went through a rationalisation program last year, but we
haven't cut services and the demand on those services continues to increase year on year.
Unfortunately the capacity to increase that workforce is just reduced and as you know
central government funding is being more and more restricted.
Our own council tax base doesn't grow at pace to keep up with pay award demands and therefore
it is a risk to us.
also staff aren't necessarily wanting to join local government now.
We're finding it harder and harder to recruit.
We may continue to find that going through if we do.
The White Paper does drive through the evolution.
So it is an ongoing concern around getting the right skills,
the right numbers and keeping our existing staff,
investing in them and keeping them motivated
and doing a great job like Jonathan does
and bringing these reports to us.
But I think it is an ongoing concern.
Any other comments or questions?
Clerk's literature.
Yes, thanks, Chair.
Just to echo what Councillor Caulfield said
about the European entry -exit system,
we had that overview and scrutiny session on that
and heard a lot about the first -hand stories
of the impact in places like Hawkins.
So it's really good to see that in there.
I wanted to ask about, we've got a reference to becoming carbon neutral as a risk or a
fader to achieve carbon neutral, but we haven't got a risk there about the impact of climate
change and what might we have to prepare ourselves for.
And I just wondered if you could say a bit about that, whether there's an opportunity
to rethink its absence from all this, or just a...
Thank you.
I think that's a very valuable point and certainly worth considering.
Yes, we're referring to C9, I believe,
which is the failure to achieve carbon neutral.
There isn't anything, and we recognise there isn't anything
that looks at the wider impact of climate change.
The difficulty we have with this is that it's quite broad,
and we need to work out how we can make that a bit more specific
and tailored to the services we're delivering.
But given the prominence of the Green Agenda
in the foundation work we've done for the new corporate plan,
I think there is an opportunity to have a look more carefully,
particularly at any of the climate actions we have
in that corporate plan and the risk that they might have
from impacts of climate change.
And also whether or not there's a piece of work we can do
around looking at what the impact
for directly or indirectly
the impact, sorry, the impact of climate change,
the indirect or direct impact of it
on core services that we have,
and on achieving any of those other strategic ambitions,
so whether it affects it.
In either case, we're looking to refresh
the corporate risk register for the 25, 26 -new year,
and I think it's worth us looking about in more detail.
So we've taken that as an action point.
I suppose that there's examples,
we often have Chancellor Hill talk about the impact
of all the risk of climate change in the marsh
around flooding and those kind of things.
So I think there are some specific areas
we could be thinking about the extent to which
climate change has contributed to the land slips
and the cost and disruption and those things.
I do just feel like there's some tangible risk
that we should be conscious of and meaningful.
But thank you, and that is thank you.
I'd just like to say I think it's a really good idea
if we look at some elements of the climate change agenda
and the ones that are relevant for the area,
would be really meaningful, wouldn't it?
So that's really good.
And Mark, can I thank you?
Just on page 43, just ottapill is down to bias,
extreme risk and moderate risk.
Can you just outline the differences and what those two risks are?
Yes, thank you. That's happy to.
Yeah, so on page 44 you've got C2,
which is the delivery of Otipore Park.
Now this this particular risk is around
the governance and finance arrangements
and its commercial liability,
which is a risk that's in intolerance.
The risk underneath it C3,
the planning in place.
This is largely to do with the work
around the section 106 agreement
and the planning, which forms a significant part
of the next phase of this, until that's all in place,
it's going to remain quite a high risk.
I think that captures everything,
unless you want it to add anything.
Thank you.
Any other comments or questions?
All good on that, okay.
So, I'm going to have to do.
I think I wanted to say more about it.
John.
Yes, thank you.
So that was, that's the risk register, but what I'm also giving you here is this draft
policy and strategy which we want to put in place by, for the 25 -26 year.
We need to review it annually.
And as you're aware, we've done quite a lot of work this year to sort of revamp and revise
our approach to risk management, and this kind of sets it out in one document.
I'd like to pick out a few key points from it.
One it's in two parts.
We've got a policy statement which kind of really sets out the objectives and the role
that we each play in that in terms of this committee and corporate governance board.
And the strategy part of it is sets out the approach.
In other words, how we do it, actually do it, the basic principles, types of risk, and
the clear guidance or putting in there some clear guidance for staff on how we can measure
and monitor risk.
A lot of this was in the pre -existing council policy, but actually what we need to do better
is sort of embed that more within the culture of the organization.
So if you were to look at page 55 and 56 in the packs, you can see that the sort of approach
to assessing risk is set out in the strategy and the kind of risk cycle.
You've got your risk matrix, which you'll be familiar with from the dashboard and overview
that I've been presenting to you.
but there's also some guidance for staff on how we assess the likelihood impact of risk
in an effort to get some more consistency in how these are reported.
Another key thing that I've done again for myself, I quite often like visual aids to
help map out how things can work.
If you go towards the end of the document, page 64,
there's an appendix on there which shows
an example risk family tree which for me helps
give a kind of map as to how risks should be managed
in an organization and how all the different risks interact
and different risk registers work alongside each other.
Some work that I know that we probably need to improve on is our partnership and project risks.
We've noted them in the strategy and policy.
There's more that I think that I need to do to make sure that we're capturing the high risks from those
and showing them here, how they get entered or escalated onto the corporate risk register.
And another key piece of work that I'm doing with teams at the moment is looking at operational risk registers.
This is the day -to -day business as usual stuff that the teams do
and have a more coordinated approach to scoring and reporting of those
and how this links to our business continuity plans.
So you see down there on the diagram you've got in the light blue,
there are all the different teams,
so what we've got there is a template for each of those teams.
And what we're looking at, for an example,
where you have a risk to loss of service
IT goes down or something like that,
you'd expect that to be in everyone's risk register,
but we should expect it to be scored similarly.
And we'd also, where we've got a major incident,
that we should be reflected
in our business continuity planning.
And having a business continuity in plan,
a plan in place is a risk mitigating action.
We have that in place, the risk is lower.
So this is broadly what we want to implement for the council,
and it's a draft at this stage.
But happy to take any comments or questions on it.
I'd be very grateful. Thank you.
Lots of good result. Any more questions on this?
Councillor Godfrey.
Just an observation, really.
I mean, it's great work, and it makes it very clear what the risks
and how to analyse them are, and the processes we're going through there.
The one thing that crosses my mind is you're talking about the staff and making sure they understand.
Let's hope it doesn't become so onerous they're frightened to do anything,
because that sometimes can happen that people are, oh, am I doing the right thing because they might be pushed too hard.
So it's just an observation that we need to protect those people from being frightened to do their job.
Thank you.
Councillor Burch.
Thanks Jonathan, really good to hear the thinking that's gone into this.
It was just a question under section four, responsibility and ownership of risk management.
So we're identified then and the role we have and above it the Court of Governance Board
which I think we've heard about previously but I don't think we see any of the workings
of the Court of Governance Board or any of the issues that have come out of that and
I don't know whether that's appropriate or not but it feels as if there's a kind of part
of the mechanism for managing risk that is quite a pain.
Well essentially the corporate governance board is made up of chief officers and other
lead officers in the council and they will look at any emerging risks and make recommendations
for changes to the corporate risk register.
So those changes that we had in the report today came from them first.
So it goes, we debate it there essentially and then it gets to CLT for approval before
coming here.
But their role will also be to ensure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing by
me reporting to them on updates to what we're doing here with the strategy.
I also want the chief officers to take ownership of their respective operational risk registers
and if we put the mechanism in place, anything that exceeds tolerance I expect them to be
up to the corporate governance board.
There's an upwards movement between then CGB, CLT and then here.
So essentially they've seen everything that you've seen before you have it.
I guess the question is how do we satisfy ourselves
that that mechanism is all working as it should?
Thank you. Sorry, Jeremy.
If I may recognise the point you're making.
I think to set a context, the Corporate Governance Board is effectively the CEO of the Council
coming together in one place to consider all the key corporate business matters if you like.
LISC is one, there are many others, budget for example.
So what you see in this committee is the idea of that work in your reports or in reports to other committees as well.
So I think the way that you will probably see checks and balances of whether that's working is only through the reports
but also there will be internal audit reviews in time to time of our risk strategy for example
and that would come to you for review as well.
So I think what we've got in place, we've put this in place in the last 18 months is a very robust process
where we're ensuring that the senior leadership of the council is all at one understanding the key corporate issues
of which risk is obviously fundamental.
Yeah.
And just to provide you with some more assurance,
Lydia Morrison - 0:33:40
our internal audit has also turned the corporate governance board as well.
And they have a role to play within that
around monitoring their audit actions, etcetera as well.
So, it's a board and it used to do with a whole of the organisations,
governments and policies and procedures.
So, and it has all the senior members
and we're after sporting other officers out back in the country.
Thank you.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:34:06
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:34:08
Yeah, following on from that, the next level down,
Cllr Adrian Lockwood - 0:34:12
it says in 4 .1,
the next level of ownership is with Cabinet.
But in 2025 -26, we'll have moved to the committee system,
so we need to update that.
That's a point well made and it was made to me earlier today as well from the corporate
governance board.
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:34:33
In fact there's a few things in there that will need to reflect the new committee system,
so thank you.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:34:41
Any more comments or contributions, questions?
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:34:48
So recommendations which are to receive a note of the report, the audit and governance
committee reviews, the corporate risk register will review appendix one and the draft risk
management policy and strategy, appendix two.
Could I have a proposer, please?
Councillor Butcher, your turn, and the seconder.
Councillor Wing, thank you, and can we have a vote?
That was unanimous, thank you.

7 Health and Safety half-year update 2024-25

Cllr Liz McShane - 0:35:14
To item number seven, which is health and safety,
half year update, that's pages 16, 5 to 70.
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:35:22
Is it Johnson?
Yeah, I'm afraid you've got a lot of them tonight,
Thank you, Chair.
This is an information piece to really give you an update on where we are with it.
You will recall that we need to produce annually a health and safety report which will necessarily
be quite comprehensive.
And this report is intended just to give you a kind of half year update on where we are
progressing with the recommendations from the Health and Safety Audit.
I'm very pleased that the audit are here to note all the things we're doing.
But it's also to give you a reassurance that we're on the right track.
And it sets out clearly in the report, but I'm going to highlight a few things
just to give you reassurance of the work that we're doing.
So I'll sort of take a few of them in order.
We've really sort of wrapped up our training, updated a lot of modules on e -learning as
well as in -person training on fire safety, workplace hazards, displaced green equipment,
manual handling and remote working.
We're currently looking at our fire plan for the Civic Centre and we will be rolling out
some training for all staff and members on the five procedures as well.
We've worked through a whole raft of risk assessments and we're actually going to be
carrying out some quite significant ones on Pacific Centre and the Hyth pool with an external
consultant.
We're working through a lot of risk assessments for our grounds maintenance teams that work
out in our districts and operate a lot of equipment that we need to make sure that they're
doing so safely and provide reassurance that we've got those risk assessments all up to
date and there's a programme of renewal for that.
First aid is another thing that we've addressed as well.
We're going to be recruiting some new first aiders within the staff and within the civic
centre as well as replenishing all of our first aid kits.
We've conducted site visits and inspections on key sites and we're working through a structured
rolling programme of spot checks which we record as part of our performance stats.
And we also have a whole raft of procedures which sit under our overarching health and
safety policy.
And the approach we've taken is to look at the detailed procedures in order of priority.
So some things like fire safety is coming up first.
and we get those approved through.
We have a health and safety committee,
part of the staff forum,
which is used to approve the new procedures.
And what you will have here as the committee
will be site of the overarching health and safety policy,
which the procedures set underneath as a schedule.
There's too many to bring individually,
and they're operational procedures,
but the health and safety policy is due to come back,
and it will be come back to the committee
before the end of the year.
But the aim is that we will have reviewed
all of our procedures, completed all the audit actions,
and hopefully improved our insurance rating
to reasonable or above by the end of the year.
So that's the answer.
It's an information piece to receiving that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:38:56
Any comments or questions?
Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 0:39:15
Thank you for that. It was a piece around staff security on that one, actually, because
there's been some discussions recently about the customer access point, and specifically
the hours of the customer access point. There have been some security incidents affecting
staff particularly towards the end of shifts. So the last hour essentially some people have
been entering the building and being unreasonable to staff. There have been actions that have
been put in place around that. We have security in place with the CAP open at the moment and
there's a recommendation at the moment which I think is turning into quite a firm recommendation
that the CAP shut an hour earlier in order to,
so to in person callers,
but with staff therefore dealing with people remotely,
by chat, by phone, things like that.
I just didn't.
I'm sure it is picked up with the report,
but I couldn't see that within the health
and safety aspect there is obviously security of staff
is an important health and safety aspect.
I think it's worth.
I just wanted to be the committee to know
that that aspect was being taken into account, that that had been seen, that there were actions
taking place on that level of that issue as well.
As I said, and for you to be aware of it and to be able to question it if you think that's
the wrong action to take under those circumstances, it seems to those that I have spoken to that
that seems to be the right action and the responsible thing to do, and to read over
to get and to have those staff in a secure environment to answering questions coming
in by other channels. But it's also one of those sad things that you want face -to -face
open as long as possible and then society is making it difficult to keep face -to -face
open as long as possible. When you've got a CAP which is a limited number of people
in order to deal with things, that gets to the stage whereby one person coming in can
be dangerous and disruptive.
And you can't handle that.
And you can't have that staff in that position.
I just wanted to make sure that that point was evident
to members and see that security is part of that health
and safety policy as well.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:41:30
Thanks for raising that important point.
And Jonathan, would you like to come back or comment?
Just to say thank you on that.
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:41:35
You're absolutely right that we ought
to be reporting that sort of action in a report to you here.
I think the report that I've given you
is focused on the audit recommendations,
mainly on the progress we've made against that.
I think the more comprehensive annual report
should reflect all the work that we've done
over the course of the previous year,
which rightly should take account of any actions
or changes we've made as a result of assessing
health and safety risk.
So that's noted, thank you.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:42:11
Thank you. Any additional further comments from anyone?
Councillor Butcher.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:42:18
Yes, I suppose on that point,
because that is obviously really concerning what staff are experiencing,
because I'm looking at the table 3 .3,
which has got headings like accidents and incidents,
do we do any recording of those kind of
aggression or violence or threats of violence?
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:42:37
Yes, that's one of the things that we've...
We've actually tried to make more streamlined and clearer
so that we can count that as an incident
as opposed to an accident,
but the mechanism for reporting that,
which we've looked at how that can be reported through,
we've got a central Salesforce system,
so case management system,
which flags any reports that get you investigated.
So we can invest, there's tools now on the staff internet
for investigating but essentially that will be managed by the health and safety officer
and where we have had unfortunately incidents of that type that we've recorded, what we
should be doing in terms of our stats reporting is looking if there are any trends or any
frequent incidents.
At the moment we're just counting them but I think over time we'll start to see if there's
is there anything worrying or anything that we need to alert us?
And rightly so, at the moment, the report, we've put a table in there
just to say that we've had six incidents, but we haven't said what they are.
So what I would expect is that when we report annually,
you'll get a list of what those things are and what we've done about them.
And just to build on what you said, Jonathan,
I guess this is all the work in progress
Cllr James Butcher - 0:43:57
and it's great to see the progress that's been made.
So thank you, thank you for all the work that's gone into that.
And I guess it's do we get to the point where we've got some kind of benchmark,
because I don't really know whether four accidents is to be relieved or concerned
or what, so whether we can just get some comparators and some trends,
but I guess that's the next stage on.
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:44:20
Thank you. I've vetted that as an action point to follow up.
Anything else on this agenda item?
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:44:26
No? All good?
In that case, the recommendations to receive and note the report.
So could I have a proposal, please?
Councillor Lockwood, thank you.
And a seconder?
Councillor Butcher, great.
And we can vote.
All unanimous.
Thank you.

8 2024-25 Annual Governance Statement Action Plan - Update on Actions

Cllr Liz McShane - 0:44:48
So moving to Agenda Item 8, the Annual Government Statement Actions updated on 2024 -25 actions.
Who's taking this one?
Jonathan again?
Yeah, it's me again.
Very good.
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:44:57
and that's why they also want to have a go at my.
This one is thank you Jeff.
This is perhaps even more
straightforward than the last one.
If you look at the front page.
Of the report, I'll just read straight
from there, but if you recall the
annual government statement for 2324
was considered by the committee in July.
And this gets published on our website,
but it identifies actions that we will need to take over the course of the coming year.
And all this report does is give you an update on progress on those actions.
So it is simply a table which says the action that we need to take,
or at least by the end of, or the dates are written in there,
and the status whether they're in progress or not.
I'm happy to take some questions, but I may need to defer to colleagues
if I'm not able to answer any of the questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any questions or comments from the committee?
No?
OK.
Then are we happy to receive the recommendations which
are receive and note the report, note the progress
towards achieving actions in the annual government
statement appendix 1?
So could I have a proposer, please?
Councillor Butcher and a seconder?
Councillor Wing. Great. We have a vote. All in favour? That's good.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:46:29
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:46:31
Great. Now onto agenda

9 Statement of Accounts 2022/23 – Audit Findings Report, and Update on 2023/24 Statement of Accounts

item nine, which is the meaty bit of the document tonight, one we've all been waiting for. But
just before we get stuck into this agenda item, can I just say on behalf of the committee
just to thank the whole team involved, because it's been a bit of a journey with a few bumps
and challenges that we've got there. Lots of work done behind the scenes, I'm sure.
And particularly thanks to Jonathan and his team. It's great to have this report tonight
and just really appreciate all the efforts and your patience and hard work. Thank you.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:05
Over to you.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:07
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:09
I'm sorry.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:16
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:17
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:18
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:21
It's not.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:47:25
Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 0:47:26
Mr Jonathan Hicks - 0:47:29
Jonathan Smith - 0:47:29
There we go. Thank you, chair.
Yes, so this report effectively brings, it's composed of two parts.
The first part is bringing the 22 -23 statement of accounts to you, along with the auditors
filing report, so their final report, which I'm sure they will comment on separately themselves,
and also to deal with the less representation, which comes from management to the auditors,
fairly standard.
That's appendix three to the report.
Appendix 2 containing the actual final version of the 22 -23 statement of accounts and the
appendix 1 actually is the auditor's state, auditor's AFR or audit findings report based
on that state, on those statement of accounts.
That's sort of the first part of it.
That deals with the 22 -23.
The second part of this report then deals with the progress that's been made on 23 -24
So the current year statement of accounts and at appendix 4 we have the
informing the audit risk assessment for the council for 23 -24 which is
management responses to some risk assessment questions. So it's part of the
auditor's planning phase and we've answered those and so the recommendation for this
particular item is for approval of the management responses as well as the
auditors are providing their update,
progress update report in 23, 24 at appendix item five,
which again I'm sure they will come into
and separate themselves.
As you'll be aware that there have been delays
in dealing with and getting the sign off
for the 22, 23 set of accounts.
There were some technical, quite technical challenges
that we had to work through with the auditors,
hence the delay and why we're bringing them to you today,
but we finally managed to resolve all of those with agreement with the external auditors.
So, yes, we have a complete set of accounts,
which I believe they're comfortable with
and happy to sign ahead of the backstop deadline,
which is actually next week.
But this should then clear those in advance.
I'm happy to take any questions on the floor.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:49:45
Any questions for Jonathan?
Chancellor Godfrey.
Cllr David Godfrey - 0:49:52
Well done. We've been waiting for this one for long enough.
When you read through the report, and it's actually quite frightening when you read the detail,
which is a riveting read of course, but as it evolves you begin to see where things have got better and better
and you're in a position where you can sign them off now, so I'm very pleased about that. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions, comments?
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:50:14
I'm sure you have some. There's a lot in there.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:50:21
Yes, and just to echo Chair's comments,
I appreciate all the work that's gone into this,
and you alluded to some of the difficulties in the 2022 -23,
and I'm looking at page 109, I think it is in the pack,
where it talks about the action plan,
And we've got these two issues, the trial balance mapping,
which I think was the thing that caused the delay.
So just taking that first, it was really...
I think we've asked about this previously,
but just really wanting to get reassurance
that that's now dealt with,
and the 23, 24 accounts are not suffering from those kind of delays.
Yes, thank you, Professor.
Jonathan Smith - 0:51:01
So basically, the trial balance mapping related to the mapping that we have.
So obviously in the statement of accounts,
we have lots of different tables with lots of numbers.
Underlying those tables of numbers
are basically much smaller numbers.
And so basically the trial balance mapping
was how we mapped all of our underlying accounts,
of these thousands of accounts in our finance system.
And each of those accounts basically roll up
into different areas of the statement of accounts,
which is what you see printed before you.
and the mapping was just, it was a difficulty
in getting that mapping right.
What we've done, we worked a lot earlier this year
in ensuring that we got that mapping right,
agreed it with the auditors, such that I think
when they were doing the work around this mapping
earlier in this year on the 22, 23 accounts,
it was taking days, and we've rolled that mapping forwards
and as I understand it takes minutes now for them to process
our sort of trial balance backing.
So we've taken what we learned from 22, 23
and obviously that will be applied going forward
and obviously improve the efficiency of the audit.
So if there's one thing you wanted to.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:52:19
Thank you Councillor Butcher.
Microphone C - 0:52:23
I think just to echo what's been said,
like huge well done to the finance team
and our thanks for bearing with us.
It has been a journey.
There has been a lot of probing, a lot of questioning,
a lot of challenge, which has all been received
and dealt with really, really well.
And you've now got a set of accounts
that we're happy with, your team is happy with,
and has been through robust technical scrutiny.
So going forwards, we, Jasmine and I,
are really confident in once the draft 23, 24 accounts
are updated for the closing position of these ones,
it will be a much smoother process
and everything that we've been doing so far
in Jasmine will update on the 23 -24 audit
has been a much smoother process.
So I would actually say Jonathan was a little bit
under egging it in terms of the mapping for 22 -23
took probably many days over a period
of quite a number of weeks, but for 23 -24, yeah, minutes.
So that's the sort of improvement that we're seeing and things are going much more smoothly.
Just to wrap up on 22, 23, I think, in the Paper Pack, page 85 is a headlines page where
it really just says the high level adjustments to each of the key, the core financial statements,
and behind that, Appendix D is where all of the adjustments are set out in detail so you
can see what's happened there.
In terms of next steps, you've got the management letter
of representation at Appendix 3 that you'll
need to approve so that that can be signed,
and the signing of the 22, 23 accounts.
Once I have those plus the assigned letter
of representation, then I am planning
to issue the opinion for 22, 23.
So that will happen first thing tomorrow.
If I have all of those things together,
I'm quite happy to hang around at the end
if you're physically signing to take the copy with me,
or you can send them through.
But we're there, so I'm very, very pleased.
I think the final thing is that we can't issue the audit
certificate yet, and that is due to the objections.
So as I updated you both earlier this week,
the statement of reasons for the objections,
statements of reasons. They are with PSAA for their review and we're waiting for them
to come back before we can send them out. But the work that we need to do there is done
also. Thank you.
Sorry, Sophia, PSAA.
Public sector audit appointments.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:55:09
Thank you. Obviously good news and obviously lessons learnt and a lot of investment in
time that's going to make a big, you know, a good investment for future work in future
so it's hopefully going to be a streamlined, speedy process.
Thank you.
Any more comments, questions?
There's a lot of subsections to it, but a lot of detail.
Councillor Prater.
Thank you.
Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 0:55:31
As everybody's got in on to the act of thanking Lydia, Jonathan and the team today,
I'm in on that crew.
Well done.
Not the easiest year and you got there.
Thank you very much indeed for doing so.
I think that one point to pick up in terms of the huge amount of work that was done on
mapping there, as you say, I think Jonathan under -egged it a bit there.
It was really nasty and it's now a much smoother process.
I think that's something that we've got to bear in mind as we're currently working on
the financial management system for the Council and making sure that we're looking to refresh
it, we're looking to put a new one in place effectively, spend what can only be described
an enormous amount of money on new software to make that pace with the process,
but we mustn't lose our lessons on our way through there.
It would be very easy for somebody to replace the systems
and have to go back through this pain again, and,
my God, let's not do that, please.
And I'm sure Jonathan is first on that list of making sure that this does not get broken
on the way through that transition, so that we all need to be on that same page,
is that when people are doing this, is it going to do these things,
or is there anything that it's going to bust all the way through? It's something that we
really need to keep an eye on there as well. And I also wanted to thank Grant Thornton
for their work as well. I understand that we can't have the certificate this evening
until that's signed off. I understand, I think, that there are still certificates of completion
outstanding for the previous, well back to 2019 -20 at this stage. Are they also going
to spit out of the system at the same stage as the 22 -23 ones? I'm delighted to see Sophia
nodding, but I'll take that on mic when we get there as well. So I'm hoping that when
we have the completion for one, we've got the completion for all of those back years
as well, which takes me back, takes many of us back to rejoining this council in 2019,
so it's going to be nice.
Microphone C - 0:57:31
I can confirm that you'll get all of them at the same time.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:57:37
Any other comments, questions?
Councillor Britcher.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:57:43
Yeah, it was just back to the action plan and a bit about journal authorisation, which
I think we've raised before, about overrides and so on.
We've got a management response about reviewing the implementations of controls with a technology
I just wondered if we had an update on that.
Jonathan Smith - 0:58:03
Yes, I mean if that relates to the journal authorization, yes, we are working with our
technology team and actually our external supplier on just resolving the access rights
point.
We've identified what was, what's the reason for the underlying causes as to why that self -authorization
was permitted.
It's just now working through the technical detail
of how to build the right profile
to ensure that the access to rights
is restricted sufficiently.
Any more comments, questions?
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:58:37
No?
And also, I meant to say thank you to Grant Thornton as well
for your hard work and diligence.
So are we, sorry.
Cllr Liz McShane - 0:58:51
Microphone D - 0:59:02
Thank you, Jeff. So I'd like to draw everyone's attention to page 330 of the PAC, which is
a progress summary as of December 24th for the 23 -24 financial statements audit. As has
been alluded to, this has been a much more efficient process than the 22 -23 audit, not
least because of the mapping being resolved for my audit team, but also the ability that
that gives us to be able to get straight into audit sampling, reconciling those figures
directly to the financial statements, and be able to get audit evidence much quicker
in the audit process.
So we are making good progress for the 23 -24 audit.
I've given a high -level update on some of our significant and other risks within this
slide.
There's nothing significant I wish to draw your attention to at this time.
It's very much kind of work in progress.
There are some minor delays on collection fund debtors and creditors and reconciling
those, and I think that's because of the mix of preceptors within that balance.
That's made it slightly more complicated, but it's nothing that I think is going to
delay the audit progress.
Happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Jasmine.
Cllr Liz McShane - 1:00:17
Sounds like more good news.
Positive news, any questions on this?
Councillor Brookshire.
Actually it was from the audit risk assessment,
Cllr James Butcher - 1:00:27
so that is going back a little bit,
but I guess it's also about 23, 24, isn't it?
And it was just something, yeah, it's on page 312 of the pack,
counting estimates.
And there's a nice little sentence there,
we would ask the Audit and Governance Committee
to satisfy itself that the arrangements
for accounting estimates are adequate.
I wasn't sure how we went about doing that.
Microphone D - 1:00:54
Yes, so the intention of this report is for our compliance with international audit standards,
so ISA 540 as referenced here sets out these requirements to us.
We list a select number of questions for management to respond to to give yourselves as the Ordinate
and Governance Committee the assurance that you need that the accounting estimates are
delivered in a way that is materially accurate and complete.
So we're...
Yes, it's their responses that give you that love of a shirt.
Anything else? Councillor Prater?
Cllr Liz McShane - 1:01:29
Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:01:30
Sorry, this is one I should know, and Jonathan gave me an update on last week,
but weekends have happened since then, and I hope you got a break.
Obviously, as part of the 23 -24 process,
we need to publish and open to scrutiny our accounts and that was something which is the
process of doing so and we were hoping to do so round about now and I wondered if we
could have confirmation whether they're live on the website and I'm just not finding it
here or whether a button is being pressed right now.
Jonathan Smith - 1:02:04
Not currently live, we have a set together but we're going through the reconciliation
process to make sure that it's all internally balancing.
So they will be published, we imagine soon,
it's just we just need to get to the bottom
of any of the items, any reconciliation items
that we are dealing with.
Yes, very much so.
Anything else?
Cllr Liz McShane - 1:02:27
All good for this item?
Okay, let's go to the recommendations then,
which are to note the auditor's final
22 -23 audit findings report on the statement of accounts.
To approve the updated and audited statement of accounts for 22 -23, Appendix 2.
To approve the management letter of representation and note that it will be signed by the chair
of the Audit Governance Committee and the interim director on the approved 22 -23 statement
of accounts.
To approve the informing the audit risk assessment for folks in the High District Council 23 -24
report, Appendix 4.
And finally to note the audit progress update report from auditors, Appendix 5.
Ollie, can I have a proposal please?
Councillor Pritchard and a seconder.
Councillor Godfrey, thank you very much.
And then a vote.
So that's unanimous. So that's great.
Cllr Liz McShane - 1:03:26
Okay. So that's the meeting closed.
Just thank you to everyone for coming and it was a really good meeting to end the year with.