Agenda item

To consider the Council’s Annual Governance Statement for 2024/25 and Local Code of Corporate Governance

The CE responded to Cllr Fletcher’s concern that the Whistle-blowing Policy appeared not to have been updated for some time. The Authority did receive a report from the Ombudsman that we should have a dedicated complaints officer which represented a challenge for an organisation the size of NNDC. Customer Services had been restructured to look at how stage 1 and stage 2 complaints came into the Authority and with support from the Executive Assistants those complaints were managed and closed within the timeframes that were published.

The annual letter from the Local Government Ombudsman and Social Care Ombudsman confirmed that the number of complaints that progressed to their referral stage last year was 12 with just one finding against that resulted in the Authority in having to make a small compensatory payment.

Cllr Holliday asked whether the spread of Audit Opinions was better or worse than the previous year. The CE said the number of Limited Assurance Audits rose to 5 from 3 the previous year and demonstrated the importance of Audit. The CE was not unduly concerned that the number of limited assurances had increased as this reflected an organisation that wanted to improve. The CE did not want that position to deteriorate beyond the 5.

The Monitoring Officer (MO) responded to a query from Cllr Fletcher regarding the constitution review. The MO explained that initially significant changes had been planned but then Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) impacted this, and those changes had become less. That said, , changes were still needed, as the constitution had not been reviewed for approximately 10 years. The proposed changes were due to go to Full Council in September, following review by the Constitution Working Party.

The CE, in response to a question from the Chair, outlined the Terms of Project Management, monitoring performance and improving monitoring audit. Recommendations had been put in place which resulted in the establishment of  3 boards; a Performance and Productivity Board, a Major Projects Board and a Net Zero and Decarbonisation Board. A new Project Manager had been appointed who would support the roll out of the food waste programme. The three Officers who made up the Project Management Team had reviewed their systems and processes and were submitting a revised framework to Corporate Leadership Team (CLT) shortly, with the intention that this would be rolled out very soon across the Council He added that the Council had a dedicated project board for larger risk led by the DSD. The new DRC and Project Management Framework Provision would have oversight of smaller scale projects where there were less rigid project management in place. The CE concluded by saying that he would like to see improved reporting of these via the Project Management Framework. The Chair agreed that part of the challenge was to keep the public informed of the problems the Council faced so they fully understood the issue.

The IP asked if it were possible to share that framework with the Committee given the links to Risk, the CE was happy to do so.  

The Chair highlighted risk assessments and asked what was in place to address this issue. The CE said this was the difference between how operational risk was managed relative to corporate risk and how one informed the other. Not all operational risks represented a risk of such scale and magnitude that they would be deemed a corporate risk and were managed at a service level rather than escalated. CLT did discuss those corporate risks on a quarterly basis so there was oversight and records of where risks had been downgraded or revised upwards. The CE was happy to discuss with the Committee on how those risks were graded and if the Committee felt those gradings were appropriate.

Cllr Boyle proposed, and Cllr Fletcher seconded to approve and accept the report which was RESOLVED unanimously.