Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Response to the draft Annual Improvement Report is included within the report; the final letter is awaited from Wales Audit Office (WAO)

As detailed in the recommendation.

The Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance welcomed Huw Lloyd-Jones and Amanda Hughes from the Wales Audit Office (WAO) who were in attendance to present the WAO Annual Improvement Report 2012 for Flintshire County Council. 

The Chief Executive said the Wales Audit Office Annual Improvement Report 2012 had not been available for despatch with the agenda but Members had since been provided with a copy as well as the Executive Response.  The report was a further positive endorsement of another year of achieving continuous improvement in Flintshire with no new statutory recommendations or proposals for improvement.

Huw Lloyd-Jones said the final version of the Report would be published later that week but the wording contained within would not change.  The Report was in three sections which were:

1.      Flintshire County Council’s performance in 2011/12

2.      The way Flintshire County Council evaluated their performance in 2011/12

3.      How Flintshire County Council planned for 2012/13.

Huw Lloyd-Jones made the following comments, full details of which were in the report:

·        Service performance remained good in many areas.  The Council’s Improvement Plans and performance reports were not as clear and outcome-focused as they could be

·        The Council was making good progress in delivering improvements in several of its service-based improvement priority areas such as services to support vulnerable residents continued to improve and progress had been made towards achieving a modern and high performing education service across the county

·        The Council had made reasonable progress in acting on several of the recommendations in the 2012 Annual Improvement Report but some key projects supporting the corporate improvement priorities were taking longer than anticipated

·        Work on the medium-term financial plan had continued, but the Council did not succeed in completing the plan by the end of September 2012, as intended

·        Good progress had been made on recommendations for improvement

In appendix 5 to the report were a full list of the previous recommendations for improvements made to the Council and where progress had been made or the work had been completed, this was shown.

In conclusion, Huw Lloyd-Jones said Flintshire County Council was well placed to take any changes forward and he added that there were no new recommendations within the Report for improvement.

The Chief Executive thanked Huw Lloyd-Jones and Amanda Hughes for their attendance and said when the final version had been received it would be placed on the Council’s website with the Executive Response.

RESOLVED:

That the Wales Audit Office Annual Improvement Report be received and noted and the Council’s response be agreed.