 Yn ymddynt, wrth gwrs, a wrth gwrs o'r cyflawn o'r cyfeirio cwestiynau ar gyfer y mynd yn y ffermwyd. Fy hollwch ar y mynd y Llywodraeth Cymru. Yn ymddynt, mae'r Cynllun Michael Atkins, ac mae ymddynt yn y cwestiynau. Rwy'n dechrau'r gwaith eich cymaint yn ei ddechrau'r cwestiynau, ond yr ystafell yn cael eu cyfrwyng iawn, yn ei ddweud y pethau'r cyfrwyng iawn, rwy'n cael eu ddweud. cywbodaeth daeth eich cwm modd yn gwybod o gweithio'r cyffredinol. So cywbodaeth ar ddiweddog cyffredinol yn olygu chi'n gwirionedd i gwael y celfad ac yn ystrym gyfer gyda'i gweithio. Roedd chi ddim yn gweithio'r cyffredinol fel y cwm modd yn y linkog arnynwch, ddim yn ysgwydd i chi wedi'i hollb yn enrych ar y llwyl yn ei gwybod a phrygau'r collwm o'r collwm yn eitru hyn ag gref. Felly mae'n sylwch â'r d Оph, ac nid oedd yn naelwch yn fachau, rydych chi'n byw cwm sydd yn diolch yn chppadig. Felly mae'n fachau, nad yw'n rhan a'r ddysgu ar newspapersu, a rydw i'n meddyliad i'r byw sydd i rwyf o'r ddoch, a'r ddechrau'n meddylu meddyliad, rydw i'n meddylu mwy o y ddysgu arno. Pan yn y dyfodol iddoch yn y daeth, ddim f1000 dy'n meddylu. Felly mae'n meddyl i'r meddyliad, 1, llawer o'i adael yn cymdeithas yn gyfwymmu. Panc, mae'r adael yn gyfwymmu? Nod o'r cyflwydd. Mae'r pant hyn yn mae'r cyflwydd. Yn gyflwydd, ddweud, ddweud. 2, cyflydd yn cerddus ym modd y ddweud. Rwy'n meddwl â'r cymledau yn dda i ni i'r adael'r cyfyrd yn cyflwyddau ond y mae'r adau yn cyfrifennu, ac ydw'u cyflym yn cyfyrdd ddweud, rydyn bod ddim yn eistedd am y cwerth o llawer. Rwy'n rwy'n meddyl iawn i'r iawn o'r hwnnw o'r stemlau yn roi ddau yn yr oedol iír munud ddaf cael yn ddó. Rwy'n meddyl iawn i'r llyffyr, rydw i'r wybodaeth chefi, yn ymmynodol y ddau yma â ddau yn rhaed i'r mae gennych yn ffawr i'r mobod yng Nghymru. Rydw i'n meddwl i'r meddl yma yn Speidirach yn ffawr i'r ddau? Rydw i'r ddau yn ymmynodol. Gweithio fyddaeth bod ynaodi ar y dyfodol yng ngyflaen gan ymwyfyr CPMG ar y cyfrifannau ond fyddion Cymru yn meddwlol ysgolion ar y cyfrifannau syr i gyd. Oherwydd mae'r cyfrifannau yn gweithio'r cyfrifannau bob iddo, gan gyda myfyrwyr ysgolion ar gyfer cyfrifannau ymbyrch, ac gallwn i'n gwzir y magylched i'n gweithio'r fydbit ni o'n amser i'n cael gwirio ni'n mynd i'n siarad gyda' sig wrth yma'r cyflawn. Mi'n dweud yw'r ysgol, so yw Andrew Cardews, yw'r ysgol Cpng. and we've now got 70 local authority audits plus 15 pension funds to do. And those local authority audits include police and fire and West authorities as well across the country. We have 400 public sector dedicated auditors. I'm a seat for train decamton to always work to the public sector. I've worked on a number of local authority audits prior to us exiting the market five years ago, as I've said, including Northampton Jackupty, Northampton Borough and all the districts around Northamptonshire, If you google my name you'll see the kind of work that we had to do especially in terms of validating the budgets that were being set and the work on Northampton Town football club. We also worked on the Grenfell fire enquiry and also in times past worked with Derbyshire County, Derby City and other universities across the country. We have a full team of public sector, as I said, dedicated auditors, 400 plus across the country now and that includes 100 new graduates and apprentices that we've just taken on in the past two months which again will be dedicated to public sector audit including the local government work. I've got two colleagues with me, the senior manager and the in charge and they'll introduce themselves. I'm Debbie Stokes, I'm a senior manager and like Andy I've been with KPMG now in excess of 20 years. I've got a broad range of experience and I've worked a lot on local government prior to us being rolled off the contracts. So I've worked on districts, city councils, police and most of the districts to be fair in the Midlands so I'm looking forward to working with yourselves. So my name is Shaniah Wilkes, I've been at KPMG for just over two years now and public sector the whole time. It's my first time on local government so I'm looking forward to it but I have worked across a lot of different public sectors in general. Just very briefly just to sum up, so we're here to do the 23-24 audit onwards for the next five years plus the extension if you wish to take that extension up for the PSA contract. We're ready and we've already started our planning and risk assessment working with Peter and his team so we hope to get our plan out for the 23-24 audit. Regardless where you are with your current auditors and their current audits to get the plan out for the 23-24 so you know what we'll be looking at and we've looked at some of that planning and risk assessment in the year of our audit 23-24 which is really important from our point of view. And we'll look to get that plan out by the end of March 24 so that you have an idea of what we're going to be doing and how we're going to be auditing yourselves. And again we want to work as we always have across all of our organisations that we audit in partnership. It'll still be robust, it'll still be very challenging but it's about working in partnership and being pragmatic about how we audit you and the issues that you face going forward as a local government body. So looking forward to working with yourselves and again happy to take any questions as a gesture. Thank you all very much. I will just inform the committee that KPMG have asked for some kind of initial documents disclosure and data from the team which they haven't received that yet from our officers. So no kind of minute detailed questions please but anything more broad than that I'm sure they'd be happy to have a stab at. Are there any questions from members of the committee? Councillor Heather Williams. Through yourself chair, not so much of a question, more of a welcome from all of us. And that at least in your initial words that sounds very encouraging about the partnership building and I think a lot of us would appreciate that. We used to have workshops with the external auditors pre-COVID. I hope that's something that you would consider. I always found them very productive to get the best out of officers, auditors and committee. So look forward to working with you. I hope that you'll sound just as cheerful and happy when it comes to the end of your first audit. And I hope in the nicest way that we don't take up too much of your time. Thank you Councillor Williams. Are there any other questions for KPMG? Councillor Limie. Thank you chair. I would like to ask, do you have a plan of work to arrange a handover with our current auditors please? We have, we haven't yet. We're still waiting to find the right time, put it that way, in terms of when your current auditors are going to complete their audits etc. We have a letter that we will send out, introduce ourselves and find a time that is mutually convenient. And again, there is a detailed programme of how we hand over the audits to make sure it's as smooth as possible. That transition doesn't impact on the officers. It's purely our time and the outgoing auditors. But that's part of the PSA contract as well, that it has to happen in a professional manner. In terms of just answering the previous question as well, we will be undertaking workshops with officers and with members to introduce A, what we expect from an audit, what you should be expecting from an audit. And if there are any new accounting standards etc. happy to introduce those to yourselves at a high level, you don't want to know the detail of what the auditors and their accountants are doing. But at a high level, what's that impact for yourselves as a district council? Thank you very much and welcome today. Thank you. Can I just step up? Could I extend my welcome as well and just ask the quite simple question about South Cambridgeshire and how you're beginning to understand the district? Because I know the audit process is kind of, has to be done almost irrespective of where you are. But what impressions are you gaining of South Cambridgeshire as a district? Very early days, very early days. I mean it's a lovely building you're in. And again, part of that would be we will start looking at your budgets, we'll start looking at your outcomes, we'll start looking at the kind of service demands that you have. As a district, you have to be part of the system now as well in terms of how you cooperate, not just with the other councils around you and the bigger council that is Cambridgeshire County Council, which is one of Debbie's new audits as well. But also in terms of the system and the NHS, Andrew's Housing Association, so all of the public sector, how do you work with those? The initial conversations we've had with Peter, obviously there are things that you have to do and there are challenges going forward, as with all councils. But we've been quite pleased in terms of the openness from Peter, in terms of his team and how they've engaged with us already. So I'm looking forward to it, but until you actually get into the actual detail and into the weeds, we just can't say for definite. Thank you. Any further questions? Just a cheeky one from myself if that's all right. You say you've cycled back into this nature of work perhaps after a few years. How do you feel the first reporting standards and what have been the kind of major changes in that time? And I guess also interesting to have your perspective having been in and they're not in, how the audit market itself has changed over the last few years and the overall system of public audit? Briefly, no need to. When we exited the PSA market, we still held on to our local government work in Scotland, so we're working with Audit Scotland, and we also had the one audit that had gone out outside of the PSA contract so we do East Hans District Council. Again, that's one of my audits to keep our hand in in terms of what was happening within local government. I worked in local government as well. I spent four years at Dudley, NBC, so I am someone who understands the kind of inner workings of a council and the demands that you have. In terms of the standards, a lot of accounting standards have come and been introduced into local government which have impacted, especially in terms of 240, in terms of fraud work that we have to do, extra 315R, which again in terms of the data analytics work that we do, which makes the audit much more sophisticated, much more whole population auditing rather than sample based auditing, which has got to be better for yourselves in terms of the comfort you get from the audit we do, but it's also very comforting for myself and Debbie as the city manager in terms of the work that we can do to actually understand what are the transactions. In terms of the market, it was broken. When we left the audit market, that was because we were priced out and it's quite clear that the price was too low. The price that we went in at five years ago was the right price to do a proper, robust and challenging audit. That wasn't what the PSA wanted. They wanted the lowest price. Sadly, we ended up where we are five years later. The fact that we're back in and we're doing it at the right price again, we know we can do a quality audit for that price and deliver on time. Thank you. That's very interesting and something for us to take away and think about. Welcome from me as well. Thank you so much for coming along in person today and I'm sure we look forward to working with you all in the future. Thank you very much. So, we return now to the stated agenda. Thank you for that. Item four is the external audit results report for... You have a few of the minutes first. Oh, I beg your pardon. I did miss the minutes. I got too excited at our guests. Yes, so thank you very much, Councillor Hull. We have the minutes of the meeting held on the 12th of October. I have received one request for an amendment, which I will read out now. This is an amendment to minute seven, the six monthly strategic risk report. We've had an request from an officer to replace the second paragraph with the text. The policy and performance officer agreed to raise the question as to whether an additional risk was required in relation to sufficient training for both officers and councillors. That does accord with my recollection of that. Are there any further amendments to the minutes? Councillor Hull. Thank you, Chairman. First of all, the word excitement in an audit committee is not normally used, so well done. Chairman, with regards to the last meeting, I was present and you too was proved that I was present, so if I could just be added to the people attending please. Thank you. Certainly I'm sure we can make that change. Are there any further amendments to the minutes? Apologies that your presence was missed there. It is very valuable to us. I will sign a revised copy of the minutes after the meeting then with those amendments. Thank you. We now come to item number four, the external audit update report on the 2021 accounts. This was published as a supplement shortly after the rest of the agenda, so I hope you've got a copy of that in front of you. I would like to ask Janet Dawson from Ernst and Young, our current auditors, to please present this report. Thank you very much. Sounding work and I think part of the reason for having this additional meeting and this additional report was to be able to be in a position to tell the 2021 audit and we are in a position to issue an unqualified opinion on the financial statements. You'll see in the report that at the time of writing there are one or two areas that were still outstanding, but I'm going to hand over to Mark just to give you an update on where we've got to on those and the position of the audit, if that's okay. Thank you, Janet, and thank you, Chair. If I could take you to page seven of the supplementary, which is page five of the report. That outlines the status of the audit that was obviously at the time of writing this report. The one substantive item that was remaining was around leases testing. We have now completed that work and agreed a final disclosure to be included in the final set of accounts, which hopefully will be signed. We also had a number of closing procedures, so the main item on there was the reviewing a final version of the accounts and agreeing the adjustments that were required to get to that position of a final set of accounts. Again, we've worked closely with officers and we are now in a position to have an agreed set of accounts which Peter will present later. Once we've received a set of financial statements that have been signed by Peter and other individuals and the letter of rep will be in a position, as Janet says, to finalise the audit and give our opinion. If I can just take you on to page eight, page six. This is the summary of risks. There are some changes from what we presented in October where we've completed work. I'll just go through those briefly now. The first two risks on your page eight are the fraud risks, a one over management override and one regarding capitalisation of revenue expenditure. There were no changes from what we reported in October. We didn't find any fraud within those areas. I should just note, as we reported in October, we did find that 1.3 million of Refcus expenditure was incorrectly classified and that's been moved to revenue by management. The next risk on there is the valuation of investment properties. So our internal valuers concluded their work on reviewing your six investment property assets and identified that three of those fell without side of a reasonable range. That resulted in a 8.6 million adjustment to reduce the value of those assets. The main cause of those was around the assessment of the leases. So the initial valuations were valued using free hold, but actually these assets are held on lease hold which has an impact on yield which flows through into those valuations. If I can then take you to page nine, which is our page seven. So accounting for COVID grants, we've now finished that work. There have been quite a few adjustments relating to COVID grants and that's really due to the initial assessment by the council. Accounting for all those grants as principal, but there were actually some agency grants from government and that has a different accounting treatment and that accounting treatment change is what's resulted in those adjustments in the accounts of which there's further detail in section four. The next risk is the presentation of disclosure of accounting items. So this risk was raised in our audit plan in response to findings from prior years and really covers the whole of the accounts. So clearly now that we've finished the work on the accounts, we've finished the work on that risk and the number of adjustments we've identified in section four is linked to that risk. The next risk is capital accounting entries. So this is work we do over your fixed asset register and the capital entries that appear in the financial statements. Again, there's no change to what we reported in October. We identified a number of adjustments around investment property classification, capital financing in the council's reserves and also this brings in the requirement for a lease note that is now in your final version of the accounts. And then finally on page 10, so our page eight, so evaluation of other land of buildings. Again, we've now completed that work. We did identify a cumulative 13.2 million pound increase in your council dwelling valuations. So 12.9 million of that was due to indexation rates. So the initial valuation was based on indexation rates that weren't supportable. And therefore when you flow through the new index or the updated indexation rates that resulted in an increase in those valuations, there was then a smaller adjustment of 0.3 million and that was due to beacon groups where assets had been mixed up in terms of the property types within those beacon groups. And then finally, we got the pension liability. So we completed the work on that area, including our consideration of the updated triannual valuation. All that work resulted in a 0.85 million decrease in the pension liability and that was due to timing differences in the valuation of pension assets in the pension fund. So that's a summary of the risks and I think we're happy to take any questions over that unless there's anything that Janet wants to add. Thank you both very much for that overview. Questions from councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chair. I've got a couple. I'll start with potentially the easiest one. So page 27 of the supplement, page 25 of the report, significant weaknesses and arrangements. It goes through and says however the unordited statements were not published until 23 December 2023. So I just wanted to have some clarification as to this because I don't believe any of us here have crystal balls and we've not quite made that date yet. It's not that close to Christmas. So do you want to go through all of your questions and then I'll go back for a response? I can do if you like. The other point that I would just like some more clarification on is the straw through chair. On our page 39, report 37, it does refer to the best value notice and the wording says council, we recommend the council to consider the impact of guidance and any statutory direction it may receive. I just wondered if we could have some elaboration on that as to what you think the council should do in relation to the best value notice. And then my last question chair, it does kind of fall, we've had it referenced by EY but it's also in the next agenda item so happy to take this when you see fit or have a response from officers on this as well as auditors. It's a relation to the overstatement on the investment property and it's an order of reference to yield just some more understanding as what the impact this has on the yield of our investments. Thank you chair. Thank you councillor Williams. Is there somebody from London that wants to have a first lab answering those? Thank you. Thank you very much about the date Heather. That's a typo. I think because it was 23 December we probably carried on the 23 and we do sometimes have an issue in terms of which years we're operating in so we will correct that before obviously it's a draft but that's really helpful. On the best value notice now clearly our responsibilities are to look at the arrangements in place in terms of how the organisation governs itself makes decisions on how it uses its information. Clearly we are looking at the organisation's assessment as to how it's made a how it's operating under the four day week and then how it responds to any external notices so we're not commenting on this situation itself we're looking at how the organisation itself responds and so our recommendation is really to ensure that the organisation is absolutely on top of this issue and making a decision in line with its governance procedures and then it has a satisfactory response to whatever challenges it receives so that's the point of us raising it that clearly it's a sensitive issue and so we are concerned that the organisation ensures that it has an appropriate response. I hope that answers your question. I think I might leave the yield question either to Mark or to Peter. Thank you. Peter, do you have just a medic? Thank you. I apologise, I've got a little bit of sore throat so I'll try and not say it. So the valuation of the investment properties as Mark has said was based on pre-hold rather than leech hold and our value has obviously not picked up that point so obviously the values we were originally quoting were overstated compared to what we now have we took the view that we wouldn't do any further work on this on the basis that when we come to this time when we come to the accounts next year we'll be revisiting this figure anyway so we just felt that there wasn't really any more work to do in relation to this. I mean the yield is based on the value if you compare your yield to your value so obviously that in theory will go down but equally that gets reassessed on a regular basis so I think the problem with valuations generally is there is quite a bit of subjectiveness around it but as regards the audit itself we're happy to accept the advice of EY and their value and we've gone along with that bigger we haven't really got anything more to say other than that but clearly the yield compared to the value of the property will change as soon as you change the value of the property Thank you Mr Russell and Siung do you want to comment? I just wanted to clarify what we're talking about in regards to yield because there's yield for valuation purposes versus yield in terms of the amount of income that properties will get in so the yield we're talking about with the valuation so the valuation of investment property in its simplest form is a calculation where you take the future income of that asset from its leases and you times it by an accounting yield and the yield is a reflection of risk in the market so obviously if there's more risk to an asset then therefore the yield drives a lower valuation so the difference between freehold and leasehold for example so freehold property is deemed to be less risky whereas leasehold is deemed to be more risky and therefore if you're on freehold your valuation will go down because if it's on a like-to-like basis because that will impact the yield you can get from a valuation perspective but it wouldn't impact the yield you get from income from the leases that have been signed can I come back on any of that yes thank you can I just clarify the valuation is that for the purpose of the accounts or was the valuation on purchase was it valued wrong on purchase I think that's because then we need to go through and learn lessons from that if so and equally chair it probably would be wise given this for us as committee to see what the yields look like now we are aware of this information sorry do you mean as in the kind of income yield that we are receiving from our investments well the income won't necessarily change but the risk and how many years it takes to cover compared to the length of the leases there's lots of information in here we've been told there's been a significant change I think it would be sensible for us to look at this and give it some scrutiny to make sure that we are as a council fully aware of what happens in future investments thank you councillor Williams I'll discuss that suggestion with the finance team here maybe there's some way we can assess this I'm not particularly interested I'm not particularly interested in sort of at theoretical value several years ago I think I'd be much more interested in knowing the situation as we stand now one item I did want to just check with Mr Mac that it's sold at least some of these investment properties and at pretty and at fairly robust values so I mean I think we need to be clear that this isn't something that kind of threatens the kind of financial sustainability of the council this isn't some great shopping mall that's going to drag the council down or something like that so we have indeed sold one of our investment properties in the next year's accounts obviously show I mean the values are at a point in time and it's the best you know it's the best estimate of the value given all the information that is available to the valueers and quite clearly I mean with the year on things will have changed and the value at that point will be based on different numbers so yeah I mean it is a moving feast we have to value our investment properties every year that's a requirement of the code so yeah I don't know but there's anything more to say on it in particular sorry sorry, council Williams one of my questions was the valuation is it from a value work from accounting or has it been shown that it was valued wrong at purchase well I mean the valuation changes as time goes by so it's basically a valuation at a point in time so it's I mean it could be very different to what the purchase price was so you know something on a year on so the valuation will have changed so it's based on an accounting valuation at a point in time thank you Mr Malik Mr Dawson I appreciate I appreciate the care with which you are approaching the value for money reporting around the four day week trial and I don't want to in any way jeopardise you or pull you into some kind of uncomfortable political terrain I would however like to just clarify if your firm had a value for money concern about the current operating procedures of the council am I correct in thinking that you would be obliged to make us and indeed others aware of that even if you were auditing a kind of prior period at the time is that correct so the code is structured the NAO code of audit practice is structured so that we look at the current time at for the risks of significant weakness within the value for money arrangements and were we to have a concern that there were there was a risk or indeed a significant weakness in those arrangements then we are required to report that both to the council and then if sufficiently significant or if actions taken by the council are not sufficient in our view to address that weakness to escalate that through a number of different reporting powers that we contain we hold as auditors within the public sector and the interesting dynamic that we have at the moment chair is obviously we're in 2324 which strictly speaking is Mr Cardo's responsibility however we are still the incumbent auditors so it's one of the reasons why we have identified that you have an inspection notice sorry a best value notice that you need to address and we have had a look at how the organisation is doing that so there is a risk of weakness there but we haven't identified a significant weakness in your response at this point but we're making a recommendation that you continue to pay attention and respond accordingly using your governance arrangements and we will continue to keep an eye on that until we have completed our audit responsibilities and handed over to KPMG and would invoke our reporting requirements where we concerned that there was a significant weakness. Thank you so just to clarify for my own benefit so you have highlighted a potential risk around how the organisation responds to the best value notice you have not identified however any significant weakness as we sit here now in that response or in the governance around that exactly and in addition you have not sort of if we put to one side the the non statutory best value notice independently of that you have not identified any significant weaknesses in value for money in the way that the council is operating. That is correct. Thank you that's very helpful and we do appreciate your engagement with this issue and I'm sure your advice will be very valuable in the future. I'll come to you in a second councillor Williams I've got a few other councillors who want to come in. Councillor Leaming did you want to respond specifically on this question? Yes it's on your question of response so there's been no significant what you're saying value for money concern raised but I take it that's on the accounts in front of us and not within the year of the trial which is the current year. So we have identified in our opinion for the accounts in front of you that there is a significant weakness in your arrangements for financial reporting and that is referenced in our audit results report which we have reported in previous years and again in relation to 2021 and we reported actually in our previous report on the 12th of October so hopefully that's not new news to you. The point is that we then have a responsibility to consider the value for money arrangements up to the current point in time under the NaO code and so we have not identified any additional significant weaknesses that we feel need to report at this point up to the current time. Thank you, I think that's clear. Councillor Leaming. Thank you chair. My questions are with an eye to the next set of accounts if that's okay. Looking down the list of risks I wondered whether any of these would continue to be a risk in the 2021 set of accounts so for instance are there any COVID-19 related government grants in the 2021 set of accounts? Do any of these risks have a tail into the next year or are they incidents which have been identified and rectified and then for example something like the index there was a problem with the indexation rates that's now been reassessed and amended and presumably will continue into the future. I wonder whether any of these risks are things that you see cropping up in 2021 please. I have another question to ask as well. So this is 2021 in front of us so I'm assuming talking 2021-22 set of accounts and the audit that would be required there I think it would be fair to say that all of these risks would be ones that we would assess and identify at the planning of our audit because the nature of audit risks is such that the first couple are on the broad risk we are required to respond to those valuations across the different types of property within the portfolio that you hold have been an area of difficulty in the past you're using value as again in a number of those areas so we would plan our procedures to identify whether or not we have the same issues or another error being made potentially by the valuation specialist that you use and then presentation and disclosure of accounting items is an area which the council has historically struggled with and so we would maintain that as a risk going into this next set of accounts and pension liabilities is by its nature because it's a complex estimate using specialists we would typically keep that as either a significant or a higher inherent risk so actually I would anticipate that all of these risks would appear in an audit plan for the following year Thank you for that comprehensive answer I'd like to ask about progress with the 2021-22 accounts please so at the last time we spoke about awaiting national government guidance on how to address these these later accounts as I understand it this is the last there is this set then there's the 2022-23 accounts and at the moment only 1% of local authorities have actually concluded their 2022-23 accounts so this 2021-22 set of accounts is if once we completed those we would be moving into the body of pretty standard place for local authorities are we still awaiting national government guidance on how to proceed with the 2021-22 accounts? We are still waiting for guidance unfortunately so the initial proposals by the department both on the 17th of July and then also in the previous now previous ministers article in municipal journal in October set out that the resetting the system was still an objective and those proposals included moving forward to a backstop date which would be 31st of March 24 to close out all open audits up to 22-23 so were that guidance to come in we would be discussing with officers whether or not the 21-22 accounts and audit and 22-23 accounts and audit would be subject to that backstop date and be disclaimed so that then the organisation could move on to its 23-24 accounts with its new auditors and move forward to try and reset the time frame and get back on track in terms of reporting and auditing unfortunately the guidance hasn't come out we as an organisation are therefore planning our resources on the basis that we will complete our value for money reporting up to 22-23 because we know that that will be still a requirement and we are closing out as many audits as we possibly can in the meantime while we wait for that guidance the issue and I think it's in another report to the committee today the issue is that the council has yet to finalise its 21-22 accounts and hasn't produced its 22-23 accounts yet and therefore it may run out of time if a backstop date were enacted so I think we're still in a bit of a watch this space unfortunately until we see what the nature of that guidance is and then have a discussion with officers as to how that will apply to southcams Thank you for that that's very frustrating in a sense because we all would like to be able to make tangible plans and move forward and thank you for your work on this set of accounts Thank you very much for your questions from members of the committee I will come to Mr Maddock in a second but I wonder just to build on that last point Ms Dawson so would your advice to the authority be that we should proceed to get draft sets of accounts for whatever the two years are as swiftly as possible and have those available to you is there anything more that you need from us I know you mentioned that the value for money audit will still need to take place I'm a little concerned at the prospect of trying to do two value for money audits in say three months as it might be is there anything that we should be how can we best prepare for what looks to be a busy a busy spring next year So on the value for money work we're substantially completed on that and the code allows us to report once on value for money over multiple periods, multiple years so actually I'm hoping that that will be relatively light touch from an officer perspective I think our advice would be to get the 21-22 accounts and the inspection period and the 22-23 accounts in draft and an inspection period completed because that is a requirement of the organisation to do so so effort on that would be well spent because that again will set you up well for preparing your 23-24 accounts should a reset be announced and then that will allow you to move forward with prepared draft statements Thank you for that I will just come to Mr Manich just to sum up and if you want to make any further comments before I close this item Just to say thank you to the audit team for their work again it's been a little bit of an elongated audit but nevertheless I think you've got through it rather quicker than the previous two yeah thanks to the committee for their support through the process as well that's very much appreciated certainly our intention is we are pressing ahead with the 21-22 accounts and we are intending to have that completed by Christmas and hopefully at that point we'll have a better idea of what's happening longer term and as Janet said I think a discussion with the audit team as soon as we possibly can when we have a bit more clarity will be really helpful and then we can map out the best way forward to achieve what we can possibly achieve in the time that we've got so just to thank you for competing in the audit and onwards and upwards as they say into a brave new world yes thank you very much Mr Mac and again thank you Mr Dawson and Mr Russell for attending today and indeed for all your work up to this point we will hope for an early Christmas present from deluk to show us the way forward so thank you very much we've been asked to note this report and we have done so so we move seamlessly onto item five which is the approval of the statement of accounts for the year 2021 Mr Maddock has anything you would like to say on this item before I open it up to the committee just to say you've got a revised set of accounts before you I haven't set here for signing later and I'm happy to say that we are in a position now to sign off the 2021 audit I do refer in the reports of three adjustments that have occurred since the set we presented in October these have all been referred to in the previous report the first one relating to investment properties was actually reported verbally at the last meeting and as I said we didn't feel it necessary or really anything to be gains from doing further work following the information provided by EY's and similarly with the housing stock it was a similar issue where the valuation provided to us was not felt to be within the range that EY could agree and again it was felt it wasn't really appropriate or really any value to do further work on that so in both cases we've accepted the valuation that EY have provided in both these areas the 21-22 accounts will see a further valuation and we've spoken to the valueers around the issues that have been brought to our attention by EY so that when the valuations for 21-22 are provided those will take into account the comment about the properties being valued on a leasehold basis rather than a freehold basis and also the issues in relation to our council dwellings the third item was a further small adjustment in relation to the pensions liability there was also one or two disclosure items and I think Mark referred to an additional leasing note that we hadn't included that we now include and that's around lease income that we can expect in the longer term broken down over tied periods and that's a requirement of the code I don't think there's anything particularly further to draw out there is a table after the accounts that shows the changes between the balance sheet that we had I was just looking for that actually it's quite a long way down the agenda so it's page 143 so it's just to compare the balance sheet that we had in October to those that we now have and the three adjustments highlighted in the third fourth column rather in the sort of salmony colour so if there's any questions perhaps I'll leave it to that thank you Mr Maddock as you say we have discussed a number of these issues in the previous item and as you said then there's a lot of sort of subjective analysis in the valuation of investment properties and indeed in our wider property stock so it's not surprising that this is an area of focus and perhaps even disagreement between different values are there any comments or questions that people would like to make on the final accounts for 2020-21? Councillor Williams now come to you Councillor Hartley I suppose just first public benefit to confirm that there's no cash variants, there's no cash effect based on the issues and valuation of things that have changed just to if officer could confirm that just for thank you for people to see the other thing and I'm sure I was just was not explaining myself correctly or clearly in relation to paragraph 6 on page 11 when the properties were bought did we pay a price based on a valuation of a lease hold or in error a freehold because this is what I'm trying to understand is when I don't feel I've actually had an answer to this because we're saying that the issue is that if we've valued wrong what I'm seeking to achieve is what happened at that point of purchase so did we pay a freehold price for a lease hold I hope we didn't but I don't feel that's been clarified chair thank you sorry for not understanding the precise nature of that question before Mr Maddock are you able to just confirm while there's the cash point and then also this purchase price issue yes so the adjustments you have before you aren't cash if the basis behind that is the valuations based at a point in time and I can confirm that properties would have been purchased as lease hold properties and that was obviously part of the the diligence that was carried out at the time thank you councillor Harvey I'm just for that yes on page 24 the narrative statement on council tax I was just a bit confused and I wondered if there was an area in here because it's explaining that council tax set by the council is substantially below the average charged by other shy districts because we've been able to use a proportion of our reserves to keep the amount of council tax down that residents would have to pay and it talks about the increasing gap between the actual and underlying council tax but given what I've just explained or what you've just explained there wouldn't that be a decreasing gap between actual and underlying that's what I'm saying is the underlying amount presumably is a slightly higher level than residents are currently paying and given that government subsidies etc are decreasing that would expect the actual to be gradually approaching the underlying amount from below if you like thank you councillor Harvey yes Mr Manich do you have any can you explain that paragraph in perhaps a different way so that's our page 7 in our statement yes historically there was a period when the council did use reserves to and the council tax obviously we're not doing that at the moment so that's more the historical comment the increasing gap between the actual and underlying I think I probably need to revisit that sentence because I think you're probably right it's probably a historical phrases because the gap we're increasing in line with what we're allowed to increase so I'm not seeing the gap as a historical gap which has remained the same so I think that wording probably needs to be amended perhaps we can it's not a kind of fundamental part of the account perhaps we can just in the next set of accounts perhaps we can just reformulate that paragraph and make sure it's clear I'm not sure it's worth amending at this point but we will be publishing two more sets in quick succession so let's just update that wording for that thank you councillor Harvey that's very useful any further comments excellent so we have been asked to approve the statement of accounts for 2021 so that I can sign them later I will ask for this to be voted on if you will indulge me can I see all those in favour of approving the 2020-21 accounts please thank you very much indeed we move to item sorry councillor Lee I just thank all the people involved with creating this set of accounts I know it's been a lot of work indeed well said thank you item 6 is an update on the topical corporate governance matters we have Mr Tully with us in the chamber thank you very much for coming today could you please present your report thank you very much chair and good morning everyone so this is our regular governance risk and control updates we are on page 146 of your agenda packs it's a briefer report this time because we only just brought you a update report to the previous committee meeting which was about a month ago but there are some useful updates in there to be aware of so I'll just talk you through some of the key points in that in terms of internal audits delivered with just delivered one since the last month that was a grant assurance certification it was an interesting one because it was an interim assurance report normally you will provide assurance at the end of the grant scheme but it's an opportunity I suppose for central government to check in and make sure that things are going according to plan so we did that and it was generally okay we gave that reasonable assurance we identified just some opportunities to improve some of the internal controls in terms of paperwork retention but nothing that exciting really that was good positive reasonable assurance in terms of counter fraud we've got the Q2 Q2 statistics in so included that in the report speaking to our fraud manager there's nothing too exciting to report here but we have highlighted three things in terms of team developments that's worth considering just a progress update on our county-wide fraud project which has got the acronym CTFI spreading well and then we've got some new software which we're trialling in the organisation called Trust ID and also we made reference to the training that we delivered to members on fraud earlier in July then just the final parts of this report which are worth noting which is highlighted for your awareness not local updates but more sort of national updates to things cyber impact the LGA provided some training material on cyber security which you might want to have a look at it's very helpful and then secondly the national crime agency have provided annual updates on serious organised crime so some large statistics in there which you might find of interest so those are really the key points very brief updates happy to take any comments or questions about them Thank you, Councillor Williams Thank you chair Just to say really that I think the work that's been done to tackle fraud can never be rewarded enough because when I've said it before we will never be able to calculate financially what this saves and I think when something does not have that figure in people's minds it can sometimes be hard to sort of allocate resources and the like so I think there are a small team but they are mighty and they are doing incredibly well I think that should be recognised by committee I think there's interesting that obviously council tax is one of the highest areas it's probably not a surprise and I imagine there's probably more on the others they're just harder council tax again it's a lot more simpler to process so I hope that they're doing very well and I hope to see more and more figures on here because that's how we set a deterrent and you're going to tell me if I'm wrong but is it a hashtag do the right thing is that what we're working to so I hope all members and I'm sure all members will be backing that campaign and cyber security I think is something that everybody at the council is becoming more and more concerned about and so pleased to see that work is being done there because it's probably one of the highest threats we have in modern age Thank you Councillor Williams Councillor Howe Thank you I'm referring to page 151 a quick question I see that we have 58 live investigations at the time of right now report and then later on you say we have appointed some external solicitors to help support the process of case files for potential prosecution I want to know if the person was found to be housed committed fraud I'm assuming that we claim that back Do we also claim back the expense of external solicitors and any other officer type because against the fraud of the person as well Thank you We have got a number of cases that are going forward for prosecution and our legal team have needed a little bit of support on those cases now they'll obviously go through the legal process and when they get to court potentially we get awarded costs I might have to come back with a bit more detail on this because I don't know the detail on it but certainly we've got a number of cases That's fine I'm happy with that and I just ask then if a case doesn't go to court for whatever reason it doesn't go to court but we do find the fraud has been committed Do we claim as well then when we are in negotiations with the person for the time that we've had to spend investigating especially if we've used an external source I'm happy to have a written answer on that as well I mean we do have a possibility of levying an administrative penalty in some cases so that will be an alternative to going to court but I can certainly find out more detail in relation to this for you Councillor Harold Chairman I'm very happy with that Thank you yes and I think as an appropriate time I'm sure the committee would be interested to understand how these cases develop and what kind of further progress is made is clearly a very important deterrent if nothing else Councillor Sanford Thank you chair In future reports and I'm looking at the same number that Councillor Harold referred to Could we have another column saying that the number's gone up or down obviously we'd like to think that paying for external solicitors will bring the number of cases down but we would like I think to see the train please Thank you I think that's a very sensible suggestion yes some sense of the kind of the work, the sort of the backlog well not backlog necessarily but the kind of workload of the team and what they're kind of working through at the moment that would aid our understanding Councillor Stobart Thank you chair May I ask how the kind of information presented this report compares with similar data produced by local authorities do we do occasional benchmarking exercises and if so what do they reveal well first of all what's their utility and what do they reveal so yeah what's the benefit of benchmarking and comparison I don't think we specifically benchmark against other councils I think the indicators we've got here were ones which we designed internally to best suit our needs so I don't know we might be able to have some comparison data elsewhere but probably no guarantee of it because I don't think we've designed or set up in that fashion but you raise an interesting point there's a big assumption of course that other people will call stuff in the same way as us it's probably very tricky to answer Thank you it would perhaps just be worth that as the second Councillor Stobart Quite understand I mean whenever data is presented there's a whole set of assumptions which you really have to test for comparability but it would be perhaps helpful to know that we weren't a whole lot worse in our performance than other similar districts but of course then the question of local circumstances and so on so you know to be approached with caution but you know some external validation or check of how we're doing I think would always be valuable Sorry Mr Malik did you want to come in I think it's an interesting area because I think different local authorities do approach for prevention and for investigation very differently I think some authorities probably haven't got as much of a resource to look at fraud as they probably should comparisons are quite difficult to do there is some benchmarking data out there but it's quite difficult to compare like for like and I know it's something we have started to look at but actually you know trying to find some data where we're comparing apples with apples may not be as easy as perhaps my first thought I mean perhaps rather than something as kind of perhaps a sort of formally structured as benchmarking perhaps absolutely the LGA they might be able to recommend here's a council that exhibits kind of best practice in some of these areas in terms of its approach and in how it reports back to committee and maybe we could just do a kind of comparison with some best cases rather than you know statistical neighbours and you know all that good stuff perhaps a slightly more kind of targeted approach in this case excellent were there any other members that wanted to comment on the report councillor Lee Mae, thank you thank you chair, on page 153 the report mentions that some new software has been introduced trust ID I wondered when that was introduced and is there any data that this produces to show whether any fraudulent applications have been found and how does it actually work is it searching through national data I'd like to understand a little bit more about what it is when it started and perhaps who else uses this software as well please so trust ID has been with us for a little while it's been updated quite recently to a sort of online cloud type system and I think my understanding of it is that if you want to check someone's identity you can upload some information and get back an answer pretty quickly I don't know massive amount of detail and again we can provide further detail on it but it's certainly something we're encouraging officers across the council to use as a way of making sure that people there interacting with them who they say they are and certainly we know how you're using it we're basically trying to make use of it as much as we can because we've actually got credits in hand on the system so if we don't use them we'll lose them but it seems to me to be a pretty good fraud prevention tool that we can use but I can certainly get you more detail on exactly how it works if that will be of interest Thank you, yes perhaps at a future meeting we could just understand what the uptake has been perhaps across the council for this tool and any kind of notable I guess the successes aren't going to be particularly exciting but any kind of cases where we've identified it's prevented a fortune or it's stopped concerns kind of early on that would be interesting to give it perhaps that heightened visibility across the council I'm pretty certain it has things out Fantastic, thank you Thank you, I'm just trying to understand a bit more about what it is How many organisations that we work with use this software is it something that we've been recommended to use? Why did we choose this particular software? I'm trying to think it was possibly in place before the past year as a desktop version what we're looking at in terms of new software is making use of an online version which is more real time I think it has I'm familiar with it being used by quite a few other councils I was involved in procurement myself but it's a reasonably well known system I think From memory I'm just trying to recollect from memory I think we purchased it a few years ago in relation to homelessness applications I believe it started off in housing to review people who applied as homelessness to do those checks and I think during Covid it probably wasn't getting as much use and then they launched an online system and I think we thought at that point this is a really easy system to use let's push this more so the fraud team have been proactive pushing the use of this across the council so that we meet our fraud prevention duties as a local authority Thank you very much Thank you I think those are all the questions on this report Thank you Mr Talian Mr Maddock for answering our questions we've been asked to note the report and comment we have done so Item 7 our last substantive substantive item is the Ombudsman Annual Review Letter 2022-23 I understand that we have Mr Ledger joining us remotely to present this report Thank you very much Thank you Chair and good morning everyone Phil Bird was originally going to be presenting this item today but unfortunately he's unwell so I'm going to be doing my best to fill his shoes so really just to kind of introduce the letter the item and the letter really outlines the findings from the local government Ombudsman from complaints that have been submitted to the Ombudsman about the council between the 1st of April 2022 and the 31st of March 2023 The complaints are submitted to the Ombudsman as stage 3 of our complaints process so the letter provides details of those complaints that have been submitted to the Ombudsman having already been through the council stage 1 and stage 2 processes The letter explains that in total 24 complaints were received by the Ombudsman across this period and of those they took forward an investigated 6 and 5 of those were upheld meaning that there was an upheld rate of 83% of the complaints that they investigated Of those that weren't investigated, these were even referred back for local resolution they were found to be incomplete invalid or they were not upheld after some initial inquiries In terms of those complaints that were upheld it's worth mentioning that three of those related to the same issue and whilst each of those cases were considered and investigated separately they all related to the same case and the same issue and that case was primarily around a planning site visit which had been undertaken but there wasn't a record that was made of that site visit or the findings from the visit i.e. around why we did or didn't take a particular course of action and I've spoken to Heather Jones from the Greater Cambridge Planning Service about this particular instance and she's said that there's been a significant review of the systems and processes that are in place so she feels confident that that one kind of instance which resulted in three complaints to the Ombudsman has been resolved and the lessons from that have really kind of been learned and integrated into that review so a further complaint that was upheld was in relation to a decision toward a COVID-19 restart grant for businesses at a lower level that was expected by the complainant and the outcome of that particular complaint was that no fault was found around the actual decision making but it was more around kind of the communication so in particular there was reference to a food licence that was needed as part in order to make that decision and the LGO the local government Ombudsman founds that that was actually an error and that when questioned by the complainant in February 2022 the query wasn't immediately addressed and it was only addressed in April 22 but the LGO did confirm that they didn't feel that had had a impact on the decision that was made and that the decision was correct so zooming out a bit from those specifics as mentioned the letter does note that we have an upheld rate of 83% for this financial year it kind of cautions against comparing that with previous years because they detail a change in the way that they decide whether or not they will investigate and this means that they are less likely to look at borderline issues and as such are naturally finding a high proportion at fault however they have pointed out that our upheld rate for this year 5 out of 6 was a bit higher than that of similar organisations during the period and by way of comparison I've had a quick look at the upheld rates for some of our SIP for nearest neighbours and I've seen that one of those had an upheld rate of 17% three had 33% three had 50% one had 75% and three had 100% so just a little bit of context in terms of how that compares with others but really to draw this into my introduction and presentation of this letter to a conclusion we are really aware that in relation to complaints it's important that we're continuing to make sure that we are undertaking effective complaints handling processes and off the back of this letter and its findings an item has been presented to the corporate management team the slides from which are included in the agenda pack page 100 to 165 really to discuss how we can make sure that we are learning from our complaints and making sure that our processes are robust going forward and off the back of that it was decided that there would be a 6 monthly learning from complaints agenda item at corporate management team really to just build on the work that's taken place to date and over recent years to improve our complaints handling processes so that's a bit of a whistle stop tour of the letter and some of the context around it more than happy to open up to any comments or questions Thank you Mr Lager and thank you very much indeed for standing in I imagine it quite short notice this morning I expect there will be some questions from members of the committee but I'll completely understand if there is any that you would rather provide a written response to given the short notice and the situation I will of course understand just from my benefit I did find this a slightly strange letter to understand what it was trying to tell us it seems to me that the percentage of complaints upheld is more of a KPI for the ombudsman themselves in the right cases rather than necessarily telling us anything very interesting do you think you could give either a rough or exact answer as to how many complaints enter our kind of stage 1 process because I think really for me that would be a more interesting comparison so we ended up at the very end of this process we ended up with 5 complaints being investigated and 5 of them being upheld but I wonder how does that compare to where we kind of started this journey right back at stage 1 roughly how many complaints are we looking at on a kind of annual basis that would be helpful if you had it roughly I mean I can't say an exact figure as you kind of have asked for a rough figure I think you anticipated that but I mean I would like to go away and come back to you with an exact figure if that's alright for the number in this financial year but actually a kind of guess I would really put it in the range of about 150 complaints across the organisation but that is a guess so I would like to kind of come back and really just confirm whether that is an accurate ballpark figure or not Thank you, it was the sort of scale that I was looking for so that's helpful but I think yes and perhaps in future when we do this letter if we can look at it in the context of all of our I appreciate it was not yourself that prepared this report but if we can look at it in the context of our overall complaints process I think that will just help members of the committee understand it in detail and I've got a few councillors who want to ask questions themselves so councillor Williamson I'll come to you councillor Stokevart Thank you through yourself chair because one thing that puzzles me is on the first agenda item it's clear that this email letter was sent on the 19th of July 2023 so obviously email it would be quite instant and yet this is the third meeting but it's coming to us and I'm pretty sure from recollection we'd have normally had it at the meeting after or at least the second meeting so just wondering why it's taken so long to get to us and then in relation to page 163 we can see that there are several cases where financial redress has been required but avoidable distress time and trouble just wondering if you could put a figure or potentially we might have to have that in writing of how much we have paid essentially in compensation for these cases Thank you chair Thank you I'm not sure we'd want to discuss to disclose individual amounts but perhaps the total amount paid out in compensation over the course of the year would I think be an interesting figure for the committee happy to take that now or in writing Do you want to comment on that? Sorry was that for me? Yes yes thank you I'm absolutely happy to go away and follow that up and provide you with a written response to that in relation to the amounts of compensation paid out Thank you Do you know the process by which this letter has arrived at this committee in terms of presumably the letter was received and you had to write a report alongside it but the question was raised as to why it didn't come to an earlier meeting of this committee Again happy to receive a written response as you may not know yourself I'm afraid I don't know the full backgrounds to that but again sorry to have to fall back on the same answer but I'm more than happy to go away and find that out and give an answer as to why it didn't come sooner and maybe a bit of a proposal in terms of the timing of when this comes to a committee going forward Thank you I think that would be sensible just to kind of buff them out that process Did you want to come back to it? Yes I think historically it used to come to the July meeting I'm getting a nod from Patrick so if we could go back to that obviously the July and September if it came after the date it's just obviously it's already a certain amount of date by the time we get it so we don't want it any further than necessary It's a long way off the most out of date report I've received at a committee but yes I think potentially this year I think the July meeting will be brought forward a little bit because of the summer holidays etc so maybe the September is a reasonable point to aim for I mean if it's going to be sent on the 19th we may well be meeting on the 22nd or something off the top of my head I think probably September would be a sensible point to aim for in the future Councillor Stobart sorry I believe you wanted to come in Thank you chair So the numbers are small so if you look at the presentation actually that confirms Kevin's comments about numbers but what actually goes you know goes through to this stage 3 process where it gets submitted to the office and it's quite small but you know any complaint is kind of a diagnostic of the organisation isn't it it's indicating that there's some issue and I wondered perhaps there's a general question from the complaints and how they're handled can we identify the difference between something structural in other words we're doing something wrong and procedural in other words we're doing it right but we're not managing it well and then finally and if I might use the term the outliers that find their way to stage 3 are also indicative in some way but perhaps hard to generalise just how that response should be managed so I suppose to sum up the question I'm posing here is how are we managing complaints are we doing it in an orderly way which tell us is it an organisation issue is the management question and then for the outliers just what is that telling us about the organisation and the way we respond and the reactions that we get you know does that give us some more feedback you know how do we make this all work for us Thank you Councillor Stobart Mr Manager I think you mentioned that there were regular reports now going to the corporate management team perhaps if you could elaborate on that a little further that might answer some of Councillor Stobart's question Yeah absolutely and I think one of the things that we discussed at the meeting at the end of October was around how we can get more intelligence I guess from the feedback that we're receiving through our complaints there are certainly kind of some comments around how like the some of the themes that we've had in place internally for quite a while are quite blunt and say kind of whilst it gives you an overall indication I suppose of where we're receiving our complaints and the types of complaints that we're receiving one of the comments that we've discussed at CMT was around kind of whether we could look to review those themes that we that we are applying and using to categorise different complaints that we have so that they give a little bit more insight as to the types of complaints that we're receiving and as you mentioned those ones you know which are kind of proceeding through the different stages and eventually ending up with the ombudsman so that's certainly something that we kind of have in mind and so I think we're going to be looking at going forward and something else to mention is around really kind of trying to push and relaunch our learning from complaints processes whereby upon completion of a or response to a complaint the responding manager is asked to kind of answer a few questions about whether there were any kind of lessons to be learnt specifically in relation to that complaint so that we can kind of gather that data a little bit more easily and look to undertake some analysis before really receiving the letter from the ombudsman that kind of really does kind of provide some insight and intelligence to the corporate management team when they're going to be having those six-monthly sessions reviewing kind of learning from complaints going forward so that's a little bit of detail I guess around some of those processes I don't know if that's kind of started to answer your question or not Through you chair a very helpful response so grappling with these kind of issues and looking more deeply I think is going to be particularly rewarding I think it behoves us to do that any complaint is it may be a cry for help but it's certainly an indication that something's not working quite right and we need to address at face value but then adopting this more analytical approach say we want to deliver value to the council through this process however difficult it might be we have to do that just one comment on the ombudsman's numbers I think we have to go along with it because the ombudsman is the ombudsman but just I think the comparison with our nearest neighbours was very helpful but also we should look at those numbers and perhaps take the absolutes there were six complaints but that is still six complaints and five are appalled so that is a small number but it's still quite significant and needs to be regarded so you might think let's look at the ombudsman's response as a proportion of all the complaints received that's a small number but I think it doesn't take away from the fact that that number exists thank you very much thank you council staff but you are right of course that each of these complaints is very important in its own right and both in terms of how it affects the complainant and also as you say an opportunity for the council to learn and diagnose issues before they perhaps become more widespread are there any, sorry council staff I think you wanted to ask a question thank you chair Mr Lergy I've got a couple of questions about the complaints by service category numbers two thirds roughly relate to shared services planning and environmental services firstly is there a process by which complaints are allocated to other setcams or Cambridge and also is there any identification if the sharing mechanisms are not working correctly, if there is no communication between the two councils I'll ask the answer the second part of the question first if that's alright so I think one of the things I would say in relation to the quantity of complaints particularly in relation to the planning services that they've done an incredible amount of work over the last year or so to reduce kind of either backlog of complaints that they previously had and I believe that there's no longer there's not been a backlog of complaints for about the last six months or so which is quite a big difference from the situation that we were in whereby there was a backlog of complaints and what happens when there is a backlog of complaints is that it generates more complaints because someone doesn't necessarily kind of receive a timely response to a stage one complaint the automatic thing for that person to do is to submit is to escalate it and submit that at stage two so I mean from my I can only really answer from my A and kind of personal kind of knowledge of the shared services and complaints but certainly I would say that that's likely to have had a significant impact on the quantity of complaints that we were receiving particularly for the shared planning service and I also know that as well as removing the working through and removing the backlog of complaints there was also kind of work to improve our response our determination times in relation to applications etc so again I think that kind of that work broadly speaking I think we would hope that that would start to be seen in terms of the numbers that we're receiving kind of for this financial year and certainly kind of in terms of the time that it takes to respond to complaints has significantly improved in that area the other kind of shared service I believe probably referring to it would be the shared waste service and again I mean I'm only speaking from my own kind of knowledge but I believe that in terms of the services that we deliver across the council the shared waste service is really our highest volume kind of service so we are kind of having a really high number of interactions in terms of picking up people's bins etc through that service so for me my kind of hypothesis would be that that would be kind of potentially why there is a higher number of complaints for that particular service as well is because of the sheer quantity of bins that we're picking up and the large number of people that we are delivering that service to so that would be my kind of answer in relation to that but again if you kind of would like any further investigation into that or any kind of broader opinion on that then please do say and we can look to submit a written response and there was a first part of the question which I've now got so wrapped in answering that wrapped up in answering the second part I've forgotten In the context of complaints are allocated whether they're allocated to South Cams or Cambridge what the process is there Yeah so I believe that that just is dependent on where the what the complaint relates to so for example if it relates to a planning application that falls within the city boundaries I believe that that's kind of dealt with through the Cambridge cities planning sorry complaint system and processes which I think are very similar to ours but I might again kind of just go away and double check and confirm that if that's okay Thank you yes Sorry Patrick there were quite a lot of requests for written responses you've got a note of how others are Fantastic thank you Any final comments on this Excellent Thank you very much again Mr Leger for stepping in and providing answers where possible we do really appreciate that Thank you for much for coming along So we've been asked to note this report and comment and we have done so I to make matters of topical interest do any officers or members wish to raise any matters of topical interest No so finally the data next meeting is currently scheduled as the 19th of March 2024 at 10am I think we may well need a January meeting by the sounds of things so keep an eye out for that The 19th of March is potentially a county council full council day where we're setting our budget so that date may have to change as well Anyway as printed on I'll change that one that'll be easier Anyway so the data next meeting is notially the 19th of March 2024 at 10am but do keep an eye out for any changes to that Thank you very much for attending today Glad meeting closed Thank you chair