Issue - meetings

            (a)       That the Annual Improvement Report and the Council’s response be noted; and

(b)       That the Schools Maintenance backlog issue be referred to Lifelong Learning Overview & Scrutiny Committee for monitoring.         

The Chief Executive introduced a report to update Members on the Council’s Annual Improvement Report 2013-14 which will be published by the Auditor General for Wales and to provide Members with the Council’s response.  He introduced Mr. Paul Goodlad from Wales Audit Office (WAO) to the Committee. 

                        He explained that the Council had two principal annual reports from the WAO with the second being received in October.  The report which was very positive, and was the best one that the Council had received in recent years, had also been submitted to Cabinet and Audit Committee; it illustrated that the Authority was governed well and was performing well, and had listened the comments of WAO made in previous reports and improved its arrangements for performance management and reporting accordingly. 

                        Mr. Goodlad reiterated the comments about the positivity of the report which he was pleased to present to the Committee.  The report covered the evaluation of governance and services at Flintshire County Council. In summary, Mr. Goodlad said that the Council had made good progress against the improvement priorities and had improved its overall performance against the national indicators.  The WAO had not made any new recommendations or proposals for improvement and appendix 5 summarised the status of the previous recommendations and proposals for improvement.  WAO was confident that the Council had recognised what needed to be done and had taken the appropriate action to ensure that this was undertaken.  However, it was important to recognise the scale of the financial challenges ahead and Mr. Goodlad said that WAO would continue to provide support to the Council. 

                        On performance, Mr. Goodlad explained that data for 2012-13 had been considered and had been updated where information from 2013-14 was available.  Action had also been taken by the Council to strengthen its approach to performance evaluation, and the need for further work to harmonise its improvement planning and performance reporting arrangements had been acknowledged by the Council.  The Auditor General’s Improvement Letter of December 2013 had concluded that the Council had discharged its improvement reporting duties under the Measure.  Mr. Goodlad added that improvement reporting for 2013-14 was much improved.  The Council had enhanced its arrangements for planning and supporting improvement, but further action was required to provide the rigour necessary to cope with the challenges ahead.  The Auditor General’s September 2013 Letter raised concerns that some aspects of the Council’s improvement arrangements remained underdeveloped.  However, six months later, there were clear signs of the Council taking action to strengthen its improvement arrangements including the development of a medium term financial plan that explained how the Council expected to balance its budgets.  Previously concerns had been expressed about slippage but in 2013-14 significant progress had been made. 

The Council had embarked on a programme of organisational development and so far this had been risk managed well and a lot had been achieved in a short space of time. Paragraph 72 highlighted the challenge faced by the Council with the assumption of efficiency savings of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5