Agenda item

Risk Management Update

(Report of the Audit Manager – Angela Struthers)

 

 

Minutes:

Members considered the Risk Management Update from Mrs Struthers (Audit Manager).  Mrs Struthers advised that the corporate risks are reviewed by Leadership Team and updated regularly and two new project risks had been identified – Friary Grange Leisure Centre (planned or unplanned closure) and the forthcoming end of the ICT Support Contract.  Both Heads of Service had been asked to attend to explain to the committee the reasons why these risks had been added:-

 

Mr Richard King (Director of Place & Community) was introduced to speak on behalf of Mr Christopher Cook who was Head of Leisure & Operational Services responsible for the Friary Grange Leisure Centre.

 

Mr King explained that the 45 year old building at The Friary Grange Leisure Centre was in a poor state of repair and in urgent need of remedial works including a roof replacement. However, at the moment Lichfield District Council had a different view to Staffordshire County Council about the responsibility of the building.  Mr King advised that members and officers were currently meeting to try to agree a maintenance programme and so Mr Cooke had felt it necessary to add this on to the corporate risk register as if no investment was given to the building it could result in closure.  Mr King said Lichfield District Council had already commissioned a condition survey to determine the level of investment required and the survey had identified an investment of £1.7m was required to enable the short term serviceability of the building.

 

Ms Christie Tims (Head of Corporate Services) was then introduced to the committee as she was responsible for managing the end of the ICT support contract.  Ms Tims explained that the ICT support contract had been outsourced 14 years ago and the current contract was due to expire 1 October 2018.  Ms Tims said it was felt to be a risk as we move to in-house support, bringing in-house three existing employees who deliver the contract for Northgate and recruit two new members of LDC staff to help facilitate this.  She said the existing contract with Northgate was no longer fit for purpose to support our digitalisation agenda and our move towards cloud based systems.  The contract has been split into several smaller support contracts alongside the development of a support desk and the project was currently progressing well and on-track.  Ms Tims said she was confident the risk would decrease once new staff were employed and in her opinion this risk would be bridged quite quickly.

 

Members discussed the first risk of “failure to respond to changing demographics” at length as it was known that Lichfield had a more rapidly ageing population than other areas.  Councillor Spruce (Cabinet Member for Finance & Democratic Services) was asked if there was any way we could add “active planning” to our assessments, plans and policies.  The committee felt a failure to respond to changing demographics was hard to quantify as it was the unknown yet everyone agreed the means testing of older people was inevitable.

 

The inadequate office support was also a concern when discussing the Financial Sustainability of the Council risk.  Councillor Spruce confirmed that the Cabinet were spending a lot of time discussing how to take commercialisation forward and were again meeting on 24 August 2018.  Councillor Spruce said they were concentrating on non-property streams of income rather than the property ones.  Members asked if all councillors could feed in to this meeting as it was recognised that the government had lessened funding and we needed to either find new streams of income or reduce services.  Councillor Spruce advised that the meeting on 24 August was to look at the legal pitfalls and strategic side of commercialisation and it would be open to everyone in due course.  He was asked if he could perhaps brief this committee at the next meeting on 14 November and this was agreed.

 

The Government had recently issued a consultation on the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2019/20 that included a preferred approach for removing Negative Support Grant and the prospect of changes in the New Homes Bonus regime for both 2019/20 and 2020/21 onwards.  In addition the prospectus for groups of authorities wishing to be a Business Rates Pilot for 2019/20 had also been issued and it was likely that the Council would be part of a pilot bid for Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent.

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