Agenda item

(To receive a report which outlines the action to be taken to strengthen the Council's governance and assurance arrangements in response to the findings and suggested improvements arising from the Internal Audit of the Libraries Project)

The Committee received a report which outlined the action to be taken to strengthen the Council's governance and assurance arrangements following the request that the Corporate Management Team consider and develop a management response to the findings and suggested improvements arising from the Internal Audit of the Libraries Project.

It was noted that the Internal Audit review of the Libraries was considered by the Committee at its last meeting on 26 January 2015.  The audit was commissioned following the outcome of the Judicial Review around the lawfulness of the Council's decision making process to reduce the Library services within Lincolnshire.

The action plan which had been produced and presented to the Committee for consideration addressed the key areas of suggested improvement which included the assessment of options appraisals; an enhanced project monitoring process by Corporate Management Board on key or high risk projects/programmes; and review of scrutiny in light of the Council Motion in February 2015.

Richard Wills, Executive Director Environment and Economy was in attendance at the meeting to answer any questions from the Committee in relation to the information contained within the report and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         During pre-discussions of reports at scrutiny committees, there was a need to think about the particular issues contained in complex report;

·         The review of scrutiny was a result of a motion to Council;

·         Where there were complex issues to be discussed by Scrutiny Committees, it was suggested that it would be beneficial to have a time table in place from the beginning in order to schedule in the opportunity for good scrutiny;

·         Some of the information included in large reports, could instead presented as background information;

·         Members were reminded that the Council's Rules of Debate were contained within the Constitution;

·         Members were informed that as a result of the Scrutiny Committee held on 27 January 2015, the Monitoring Officer did receive four complaints.  The complaints were not upheld, but three issues which were considered to have validity were highlighted as follows:

1.    The timing of scrutiny needed some broad consideration.  In the case of the Libraries project, it may have been beneficial to have had a bigger discussion one or two years earlier.  There would be two questions for the Scrutiny Review to address.  Firstly, how could open developmental scrutiny be timetabled? Secondly, did the Council have the correct balance between proactive developmental scrutiny and pre-decision scrutiny;

2.    Conduct of the Committee – it was reported that it was not illegal for 'whipping' to take place in scrutiny committees, and it was up to members to decide how they wanted to conduct the meeting, but should there be a presumption against whipping?  It was thought that generally, scrutiny did not appear to be whipped, as members tended to say what they wanted to depending on what they believed;

3.    The role of officers in supporting scrutiny – the role of local government officers was to serve the council as a whole in all its activities.  Recently, more officer time was being spent dealing with the outcomes of decisions made by the Executive and it needed to be queried whether the same quality of advice was being given to scrutiny.  How should scrutiny processes be supported by officers to ensure that the council had good scrutiny, as good scrutiny would lead to better decisions;

·         It was commented that in general terms members were not made aware in good time of decisions which were likely to come up.  The old-style Policy Development Groups (PDG's) were referenced, as it was thought that they provided an opportunity to field any concerns that arose.  It was commented that PDG's were an extra tier in the decision making process, and it was thought that they had worked well;

·         It was queried what assurance could be given that the same situation would not occur again?  Members were advised that assurance could not be given that another Judicial Review would not take place, however, the suggested improvements from the Internal Audit report were being implemented, lessons were being learned and a lot of work was in progress on the scrutiny side.  Positive assurances were being received from the Director and there was an acknowledgement that lessons did need to be learned, and it would be role of the Audit Committee to track the actions;

·         It was noted that the management response from Dr Tony Hill, Executive Director of Community Wellbeing and Public Health had been included, which explained some of the actions which had been taken which were specific to the library service;

·         Issues around scrutiny had been raised by the internal audit report.  To some extent this came down to how members carried out scrutiny;

·         A lot of councillor development had been carried out since the election, when almost half of the councillors elected were new to the Council;

·         The Review of Scrutiny which had commenced recently would allow councillors to set out how they wanted to do scrutiny in the future;

·         The vast majority of decisions would not require the council to go out to public consultation;

·         It was felt that some of the management responses in the action plan needed to be firmed up;

·         If alternative proposals were submitted during a public consultation, it was right that they should have some evaluation.  However, there were risks in deciding whether to consider alternatives from a public consultation.  It was important that nothing should be put to the public, that could not be delivered;

·         In terms of assessments for projects, was the authority open to acknowledging when it did not have the necessary specialised skills and would seek those skills externally early enough;

·         It was set out in the internal audit report, that if legal advice had been sought earlier in the process then different decisions may have been taken;

·         One of the concerns of the Corporate Management Board was that the authority would not be able to afford to employ as many specialists in the future.  However, the Committee was advised that in the future the more cost effective option could be to buy in that expertise when needed;

·         It was very difficult to take account of local issues when consulting on a global decision.  However, it was important to gather local views to get an idea of what mattered locally.  Local knowledge needed to be valued and this was where scrutiny could be really useful;

·         If all scrutiny was done in a formal way, some of the benefits could be lost;

·         In terms of the reporting back of the Scrutiny Review group, it was thought that as it was created through a council motion, it would report back to the Full Council.  However, it was commented that it may be helpful for the Audit Committee and Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee to receive some early feedback;

·         It was suggested that it may also be useful for the Review Group to examine consultations that had worked well and what could be learned from them.

RESOLVED

1.    That the Audit Committee accept the response from Dr Tony Hill on the Library Service actions; and

2.    That the Action Plan from the Corporate Management Board be received.