Issue - meetings

That the Committee is assured by the review reports of the Wales Audit Office and supports the Council’s executive response.

The Chief Executive introduced the Wales Audit Office (WAO) review reports on Corporate Assessment follow-up, Good Governance when determining service changes, and the effectiveness of the Council’s efficiency savings programme.  The reports, which fed into the Annual Improvement Report (the next agenda item) were presented to give assurance on those areas and to consider whether the Council’s executive responses were proportionate.

The following feedback given by the Corporate Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee, together with officer responses, had been presented to Cabinet:

·         Financial resilience - concerns that the 95% target for efficiencies was too high and should be reduced as currently only 85% of efficiencies were being achieved.  In recognising this significant challenge, the Chief Executive had explained to the Committee the need to maintain organisational pressure to achieve as close to 100% of planned efficiencies as possible; and

·         Overview & Scrutiny - a view had been expressed that more could be done to scrutinise outcomes of budget-led issues following their implementation.  The Chief Executive had said that this approach was already being developed along with pre-consultation on budget options.

The Chief Executive said that the report was overall positive and assured the Committee that work had commenced on the proposals for improvement, which were neither recommendations nor new issues.

Mr. Paul Goodlad of WAO explained that sharing the findings with the Council at an early stage meant that actions could be instigated before publication of the report; an approach which worked effectively.  He said that areas of improvement could always be identified and confirmed that there were no significant concerns.

Sally Ellis asked about progress with the Digital and People Strategies since this was highlighted in the WAO report.  The Chief Officer (Governance) explained the development of an action plan to set out the achievement of aspirational outcomes for the Digital Strategy.

Councillor Andy Dunbobbin asked whether the Council intended to engage with other councils on areas of the Digital Strategy due to the scale and nature of this work.  The Chief Officer gave examples of services already provided on a regional basis and others where collaborative opportunities to replace existing ICT software were being explored regionally or nationally.

In response to a query by Councillor Paul Johnson on the improvement proposal for the efficiency savings report, Mr. Goodlad explained that WAO would revisit some of the more strategic issues to assess whether the non-financial impact of efficiency initiatives was being evaluated.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee is assured by the review reports of the Wales Audit Office and supports the Council’s executive response.