Issue - meetings

Report from the Director of Finance attached

The Leader of the Council Councillor Eamonn O’Brien presented a report setting out the Progress Update from the Council to the Statutory Recommendation received from the External Auditor under schedule 7 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.

It was explained that the report provides the second update on activity and delivery against this action plan with the previous update being brought in April 2025 and highlights the improvement work that has been carried out by the Assurance Boards. In addition to the work carried out by the Boards there have been Council wide briefings, Senior Management sessions and Strategic Leadership Team engagement with the improvement work and compliance sprints.

The progress made in the Improvement Action Plan was set out and it was explained that there continues to be progress made within the expected target date.

The plan was split into the following areas:

·         Financial Resilience – All actions on track or complete. The Finance Board overseeing key milestones around zero based budget workstream and development of the 26/27 budegt proposals on track.

·         Finance Capacity and Transformation - All actions are complete or on track apart from recruitment to phase 1 as per the last report. There was a slight delay following the conclusion of the consultation process whilst a recruitment partner was procured to support the first round of recruitment and increase the likelihood of a successful recruitment process in a very challenging labour market.

·         Governance and Compliance including Estate Management and Leadership and Governance Arrangements -

·         The work to review long leases has now been completed. An exercise was undertaken by Land and Property in which they reviewed a sample of leases, they considered the demise, term, commencement date, rent reviews, repairing obligations (including an extract of the clause) and insurance obligations. The work carried out by Land and Property was validated by the legal team. No issues were found from this assurance work. All of the new six assurance boards have been set up and meet on a monthly basis, each assurance Board provides a highlight report of their activity which is reviewed by the Executive Leadership Team. The establishment of the Corporate Landlord team is overdue however staff consultation has commenced and will end on 18th August 2025.

Councillor O’Brien explained that the work had established better processes and challenged the way in which work was carried out and identified where change to working cultures was required. 

The assurance framework which supports the six Assurance Boards has been developed further and finalised with a detailed Improvement Work Plan accompanied by quarterly milestones which are tracked through each Board’s Highlight Report.

The assurance framework details roles and responsibilities of Chairs, Deputies and Leads of the Board. It determines attendance and sets out meeting expectations. Improvement activity is on going across all Boards.

Those present were given the opportunity to make comments or ask questions and the following points were raised:-

·         Councillor Gartside referred to the delay in recruiting finance posts and using agencies to assist  ...  view the full minutes text for item 85