Agenda item

(To receive a report which provides the Committee with the opportunity to review the contents of the draft statement – ensuring that it accurately reflects the Committee's understanding of the Council's governance and assurance arrangements)

It was reported that the Council was required to reflect on how well the Council's governance framework had operated during the year and identify any governance issues that needed to be drawn to the attention of Lincolnshire residents.

It was noted that good governance underpinned everything that the Council did and how services were delivered often came under close scrutiny.  a 'good' Annual Governance Statement was an open and honest self-assessment of how well the Council had run its business across all activities – with a clear statement of the actions being taken or required to address any areas of concern.

The development of the Annual Governance Statement was overseen by the Audit Committee and recommends its approval to the Council.

Members were provided with the opportunity to ask questions to the officers present in relation to the information contained within the report and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         It was noted that there was not a need for the Monitoring Officer to produce an annual report, but there were statutory things that needed to be reported to Council;

·         As there were other systems in place, the situation with Agresso was not as bad as it could have been;

·         A claim would be submitted to Serco for the additional costs incurred by the Council during the implementation of Agresso, however, the Council may need to bear some of these costs at this time.  But the Council would be pursuing all avenues to recover all costs;

·         There would be a need to examine more closely how well the handover from Mouchel to Serco took place;

·         It was queried whether discussions regarding devolution would add an element of uncertainty to the authority, and it was noted that officers would be looking at other authority areas, particularly the Cornwall offer, as this was more similar to Lincolnshire.  It was noted that the governance arrangements for Cornwall would not be around an elected mayor model;

·         It was understood that work on the implementation of Mosaic had begun;

·         It was noted that originally the Council had needed to find savings of £55million, but due to cost pressures, that figure had risen to £66million;

·         In relation to information governance, it was expected that there would be a dialogue with the Information Commissioners Office, as the Council would like some guidance in relation to information sharing;

·         The Monitoring Officer advised that he would write to all MP's explaining that all letters they sent to the authority would be shared with the relevant local council if it would assist in a resolution to the issue;

·         The importance of risk culture should not be underestimated, and the probability of something going wrong needed to be balanced against the impact it would have if something did go wrong;

·         It was believed that more information on Agresso and Mosaic implementation would be available in September;

·         With the reduction of staff within the organisation, there was concern that those staff with skills and knowledge were being lost, and it was queried how this issue was being managed.  Members were advised that a skills audit had been carried out, and it was acknowledged that there was a risk that skills would be lost, however, officer were reasonably certain they knew where any 'hot spots' were;

·         It was noted that the Chief Whip had been given the task of looking at how the Council carried out its consultations from a political perspective.

RESOLVED

1.    That the Committee agree that the contents of the Annual Governance Statement 2015 accurately reflect how the Council was run:

2.    That the Statement included the significant governance issues/key risks the Committee would have expected to be published.