Agenda item

Annual Governance Statement 2019/20

Minutes:

John Scott, Audit Manager:

 

a.    presented a report to inform Audit Committee that the Annual Governance Statement (AGS) for 2019/20 had been signed off by the Leader and Chief Executive as at 17 August 2020, detailed at Appendix A

 

b.    highlighted that following thorough investigation the Senior Officer  Group had found evidence of three significant governance issues to report in the AGS, one carried forward from 2018/19 and two further issues identified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic

 

c.    detailed the three significant governance issues identified as follows:

 

  • The Disaster Recovery plan in place for IT arrangementsis not sufficiently aligned with the Business Continuity plans that are currently in place for restoring key services in terms of IT needs. This issue has been carried forward from 2018/19 and whilst now well on the way to completion, remains as a significant issue until fully completed. (C/F from 2018/19)

 

  • Review of impact of Coronavirus on the council’s service delivery and embedding new ways of working for staff and elected members.  Some changes to governance arrangements have been inevitable as an impact of the pandemic on the council and this review will ensure good governance moving forwards.

 

  • Vision 2025 needs to be re-profiled and communicated to a wider audience in the light of COVID-19. The strategy was adopted in February 2020 but there was no formal public launch due to COVID-19. The council’s response to the pandemic was to proactively divert resources to tackle the emergency and all projects and programmes that could be paused/had not already commenced were stopped in a planned way. Tackling the emergency situation and resulting recovery phase has been a long process due to the prevalence of COVID-9 nationally and there is now a need to review Vision 2025 in light of COVID-19, re-profile the commitments in the strategy and then communicate it widely. This process started in late August 2020.

 

  1. reported that Corporate Management Team (CMT) would continue to monitor as part of quarterly performance monitoring those issues of lesser concern, previously referred to as ‘ones to watch’ to ensure they retained high visibility, to be monitored at very senior level at a minimum once a quarter and included in the quarterly Dashboard Report to Leadership 

 

e.    invited members’ questions and comments.

 

Question: With regards to the development of activities to support the city and High Street, were there any examples of what had been done so far?

 

Response: Simon Walter’s Directorate were undertaking some work as part of the Lincoln Town’s fund for getting businesses back open again. Also, as part of Vision 2025 there were a range of projects in the pipeline such as knocking the TIC building down at the Cornhill.

 

Question: Did the Audit team work to the definition of sustainability?

 

Response: Officers were unable to give a detailed explanation on this however work on Climate Change had been outlined in Vision 2025.

 

Question: With regards to disaster recovery, what work was still yet to be done?

 

Response: A storage site was being set up at Hamilton House. The project was initially underway but storage space held it up. The IT recovery plan was being updated in a couple of weeks.

 

RESOLVED that the contents of the Final Annual Governance Statement with a view to monitoring progress on the significant issue identified over the coming year 2020/21 be agreed.

Supporting documents: