Agenda item

That the Forward Work Programme be approved subject to the inclusion of items on Agile Working, Health & Wellbeing and the People Strategyfor submission to future meetings.

The Member Engagement Manager introduced the report to consider the Forward Work Programme for the Committee. 

            He detailed the items reported for consideration at the 12 June and 10 July 2014 meetings but added that following earlier discussions, updates on Agile Working, Health & Wellbeing and the People Strategy had been requested.  The Member Engagement Manager suggested that he liaise with the Chairman and the Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development to bring the items forward.  The diary for 2014/15 would be considered at the Annual County Council meeting scheduled for 20 May 2014 and following this meeting, the Member Engagement Manager would include the meeting dates for 2014/15 and would liaise with the Chairman to populate the agenda items. 

            Councillor Arnold Woolley spoke of recent meetings of Audit Committee and raised significant concern about Value for Money and the lack of management accounts for Flintshire County Council.  The Audit Committee had been advised that neither the Council’s external auditors nor the Audit Committee were responsible for auditing Value for Money (VFM) projects and Councillor Woolley suggested that this Committee should scrutinise the issue of VFM.  The Chief Executive referred to the comments made at the Audit Committee and said that the outcomes made by the Wales Audit Office had been positive.  The Head of Internal Audit had indicated that even though Audit did audit VFM to a point, not enough profile was given to it and the Chief Executive had suggested that auditing of VFM was not consistent across the Council.  He added that it was not a simple task to undertake and questioned the comments made by Councillor Woolley on management accounting.  Councillor Woolley said that he had received a document which advised that the organisation did not have the management accounts and therefore he was not able to view them.  He added that they had been available to him when he was Leader of the Council and explained that the information he was requesting was for the actual amounts of what had been spent rather than the amounts allocated to budget areas or were projected to be spent.  Councillor Woolley also indicated that he had been advised that for VFM projects, balances of up to £0.100m were not audited and neither were variations of up to 5% of turnover which could result in potential errors of £15m.

            In response to the comments made, the Chief Executive said that the comments made at the Audit Committee did not imply that VFM was not being audited.  Officers from the Wales Audit Office (WAO) had been present at both meetings and had been satisfied with the auditing by Flintshire County Council.

            Councillor Woolley spoke of the detail of the auditing of Town & Community Councils compared to Flintshire County Council and said that John Herniman from WAO had advised that a different level of auditing was required and that the costs to audit Flintshire County Council in such detail would be prohibitive.  In response to a question from the Chairman, Councillor Woolley confirmed that he did not feel that the monthly Revenue Budget Monitoring provided enough detail.  The Chairman suggested that Councillor Woolley raise the issues when the Wales Audit Office was present at the meeting of this Committee scheduled for 12 June 2014.

            The Cabinet Member for Corporate Management felt that the auditing of Town & Community Councils could not be compared with audits undertaken for Flintshire County Council and suggested that Councillor Woolley was questioning the integrity and credibility of the officers who produced the Revenue Budget Monitoring reports.  He felt that the Council could not afford to undertake the amount of detail suggested by Councillor Woolley.  The Chief Executive concurred about not being able to compare local authorities with Town & Community Councils and spoke of the positive comments received from the WAO and the reduction in audit fees which illustrated the level of confidence that the WAO had in the authority. 

            Councillor Richard Jones felt that VFM could not just belong to this Committee and suggested that a description should be provided of what was expected of each service and what that service was providing to ensure maximum VFM.  He added that a starting point could be to scrutinise the 46 VFM projects identified to ensure that savings were being made and consideration could then be given as to how the service area was performing. 

RESOLVED:

That the Forward Work Programme be approved subject to the inclusion of items on Agile Working, Health & Wellbeing and the People Strategyfor submission to future meetings.