 Radw'n gwych ar unrhyw i'r gwybod cymdeithasol. Rhyw roedd stemeth ar ôlion iawn i gwaith ar y Rhyw 450 Llywodraeth Cymru, ac mae ein llef am yr oedd yn lleiaid cyffredinol cynghwysild. Mae gennym i'r cymdeithasol y Ymgylchedd Michael Etkin, a fe delwed eich cymdeithasol. Roedd cwm yn cymdeithasol yn yr oedd yn cais i'r cwmbaeth yn y lltwyr i gael eu gweld â'r gyrdun yn chi. Mae'r cymdeithasol yn gweddar gan y gwrddorol. Cymru oedd y ffordd o'r newydd ym jeiwch yn bwrdd, yw ddwych ar gweithio sydd yn bwysig oherwydd creu ei hun oes oed yn bosibl ygafel. Yn y ddwy'r cyflogau ar y cyfrifus, rydych yn fawr i fod yn gyfrifysgio ar y cyfrifysgol yn y cyfrifysgol. Rwy'n fawr yn wneud o'r azreig. Rwy'n yn fawr, mae'n fawr yn fawr yn ble byddechol i'r drefdydd. Fel y cyfrifysgol yn y cyfrifysgol, ond yn eisio yn欸us i chiodol i'w hefyd. Yn y gallu'n ddweud am y dyâm panodiol o syllaethau. Mae yw e FAedd iawn i chi ddetwg yma, ac mae ddweud o gyflym. Mae ddweud yma yn gwneud â rhaglaf yn ddweud, ac mae'n gyddon o hyn. Mae'n gyddon oedd yn ddweud â'r rym不起, a rydych yn siŵr â'r rym不起, a ydych yn edrych o'r arddangos y peth, mae ddweud hynny o gyddon o hynny, yn ddweud sylw, ond yn y byw, ac mae'n hynny o gyddo i'n ddych yn oed, o'r pwng yn ymgyrch. Ymgyrch meddwl yma yn maddu cyllidol ar ynddo yn Murdyn, ymgeidwch i'r gwiswys ymgletwch. Patric, rydyn ni wedi gwiswys ar ymgyllidol yn y ddysgu, rydyn ni? Halryd ar gael. Dysgu eu hyffordd mwy o'r panfyrdd. Mae ymgyrch. Yr meddwl yma'r ddysgu'r ffordd a'r ddysgu'r ymaol a'r ysgol yn oed yn gwybod ymgletwch yma'r ysgol yma'r gysylltu. buddyn ni'n gydig o'r pethau! felly, sefnill bydd eich cyfnod ymateb â'r cyfrindig i'r ddweud o wybod hyn sy'n dod o gyfle. maen nhw, ddweud, mae'n gyfrindig beth oes byddiol i gael y cyfrindig beth oeddiol ar y gallant i gweithlenu. Mae'n gweithio gyda'r cyfrindig beth oedd yn gymrydol. Felly, mae'r cyfnod個fa am gwybodaethau Cymru, dweud o gwybodaeth a'r cyfrindig apryddiol. Adrwy'n cyfrindig beth oedd MAen nhw i gael y cyfrindig beth oes byddiol ar gael y cyfrindig beth oeddiol. Ychydig. Fedry addigos, 3 mewn hyd yn y bydd y gweithdoedd iawn. Mae ddiwed давайте weithio am y gyrwm hwn ngeiffredig a'l wir crydydu'n mewn fuddidliadau arall ar 26oi July 2023. As thysg mor gan rhai gyffredig yw Shop, yn gweithgiadwyr blaenol mor bonusr1, am y gallu ein cymuned gyda hyffordd hwn yllachau i gael o weithio. I will sign this correct record after the meeting. The next item of business is public questions. We did receive a submission of a public question. Is the public speaker in attendance? In that case, will we provide an original response in that case? In the question? No, fine. In that case, we will proceed with a substantive item for which is the external audit 2021. We're looking here at the audit results report on the position of the external audit for the 2020-21 financial statements. And I believe we're joined by a number of our audit colleagues from Benson Young. Could I please ask Janet Dawson to present her report? Thank you. Thanks, Jen. So, imprintedly, you've got our audit results report for the 2021 audit, which we wrote out at the beginning of this month. So what I've intended to do is give you an update on the points that we're outstanding. Take it as read though, and then we're happy to answer any specific questions that you have on the contents of the report. We noted in the report that we still had work to do on the testing over the COVID-19 grants that the organisation had received in the year. There are a number of amendments that we still need to work through arising out of that work in the updated financial statements, but we're pretty much clear through that work now. We also noted that we had to complete over the testing of investment property valuations. We were awaiting the final report from our specialists on that. We've now had that. That indicates that the investment property assets as reflected in the draft financial statements are actually overstated by eight and a half million. So management have accepted that difference and will amend. So that's a fairly recent finding, so I don't think it's in their report. And the main reason for that difference is the basis on which the assets were being valued originally as freehold, but they're actually leasehold. And therefore, the professional value as view of that is that their value is somewhat less on that basis. We said that we needed just to complete our work on testing of other land and buildings, particularly around housing asset valuations. We're just finalising our work on that at the moment. Some of them have been revalued using an indexation process and one of our team is just working through that to finalise that now. And then finally, we have a point around the IS-19 procedures on the pension fund liability. We're waiting evidence from management to support some underlying assumptions regarding membership numbers. There's been an updated triennial valuation of the pension fund as at March 2022. And what we're doing is just checking back to ensure that the movement is appropriate, that the membership numbers that are reflected in the latest information should or should not be reflected within the valuation that's showing at the end of 2021. We also then have our closing procedures. The largest of which will be actually to have an updated set of financial statements that reflect all of the amendments that we've identified during this audit process. And my note of caution on that is that there are a significant number of amendments that you'll see in section four of our report. And we know that that is quite a tricky technical process, which is can be quite time consuming both for the team, the finance team and then for us just to work through. But in terms of progress on the audit, you'll note that there are still some challenges, I think, for the finance team to be able to respond to some of the queries partly because the information is so historic now. And some of the individual weren't in post while this year underawd it was underway. And there's still some work to be done about reaching out beyond the finance team to get the appropriate quality of supporting information first time for us to then be able to audit. But there has been some significant progress on that since Mark and I have been reporting to you over the last couple of years. And I think we are pretty much 90 95% complete on our audit now. So we do anticipate that we will be able to bring a completed picture to the next audit committee and be able to approve and sign off at that stage. But what you need as an audit committee is that updated set of financial statements that fully reflects all of the amendments before you're then in a position to approve the statements. So I'll stop there. Happy to take any questions unless, Mark, you wanted to add anything else? I don't think so, Janet, in particular. Just to echo your comments, while there is clearly improvement in the process year on year, there is a way to go to get to that perfect audit position, so we say. But it's going to be a slow progress and management of recognis that that's going to take a few cycles to get into that position. Thank you. Thank you, both. I'll come to members in just a moment. I wonder perhaps, Mr Maddock, if you wanted to make any comments to the stage before I open it up to councillors. Yeah, I think I would go along with what Janet and Mark are saying. I think they've made some good progress, but there are still one or two areas to improve on. The point about those outside finance I think is well made and I think there's some training probably and sort of work around that, just getting them to understand the process a bit. Because while I think in finance there's more understanding of the audit process, I think colleagues outside finance there probably isn't. So I think we probably need to go through and get them to help them to understand the process and the sort of quality of information that needs to come forward. So we're intending to have a similar sort of lessons learned type meeting in relation to 2021, probably sometime during November, and we'll pick up some of those points then. And I'd welcome some input from Mark and Janet to that as well. Thank you. I'll open up this report to members for any questions. I believe I had councillor Leeming and then councillor Hello Williams. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. So I'm really delighted to hear that there's been significant progress. Thank you to the finance team for all the work that you're doing and thank you to you auditors for recognising this and for working with us. Look, speaking about the two significant adjustments, the £8 million of the asset revaluation, could I check please? Is that something that's going to just move through reserves or is that something that could have an impact on people's operational choices? That's the first question. My second question is, as far as what's outstanding, are these two things, things that rest with sort of external bodies, sort of relying on the expert value and the pension value? We're waiting for information from external people, not from our internal financial team, please. Obviously they'll have to work through the adjustments in the accounts, but in terms of substantive testing, has all the work that's been done with the finance team being completed, please? My third question is, when will we move on to the next set of accounts? Could you just give us a little update on your plans for the 2021-22 accounts, please? Thank you. So, maybe if I take the first two questions there and then Janet can come in on the last one regarding timing. So, the word's out, the investment property valuation movement, the £8 million, so that would get flowed through reserves so it wouldn't impact the council's general funds or the bottom line in terms of council tax setting, et cetera. So it is just a pure capital movement that gets washed out through the accounts. The work that's outstanding, I think, so that work has progressed over the past few weeks, so we do now actually have everything, I think, hopefully, that we need to conclude on that work. It's just a matter of timing that we've not had the available time to work through it as yet. And as Janet said, we are working through those areas now, so there's nothing outstanding as it stands from third party bodies. So it is between us and officers to clarify and close down those areas which we're hoping to do, you know, the back end of this week and into next. Janet, if you want to pick up on the last point. Yeah, sure. So in terms of timing going forward, it's a really great question. So all things being equal were then no debate within the external audit system with the department or levelling up housing and communities, the Financial Reporting Council, the National Audit Office, and the audit firms, as well as the local government representatives. If there were no debate there, then we would anticipate that the council would move on to prepare the 21-22 accounts. We would schedule the audit, you know, as soon as we could identify an appropriate time for both your team and ours to come in and do that. And we would continue to work through to then do the 22-23 audit and then the 23, and then 23-24 hands over to another audit firm. However, there is, as we discussed at the last audit committee, some significant work going on within the system with those various stakeholders to determine whether or not backstop dates should be put in for any delayed audits, which would mean some sort of reduced scope or disclaimed opinion to try and reset the system. And at the last meeting, I believe that we said we hoped to have an update. We were expecting that further guidance would have been published by now. It hasn't come out. We are still in deep discussion with all of those stakeholders, but they haven't yet indicated when they're going to be in a position to announce what the approach should be. So we are staying close to that. I can't give you any more certainty, but my point is that the organisation itself will need to prepare its statements for 21-22 and 22-23, and should be working through that while we wait to see what the next announcement is regarding dealing with delayed audits. Thank you very much. I have a couple of points about things that are actually in the accounts, but perhaps I could leave that to later. It's just a few small matters. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you Chair. So through yourself, if I could just ask the two outstanding issues when the information was passed over to EY, I think probably either ourselves or them can answer that. I think I'll leave it there if I can then come back to pending on that answer. Thank you. Who wants to, Mr Medic? I'm not entirely sure where we are with the IAS-19 stuff. Are you waiting for information from us still? Is that what we were saying? So on the IAS-19, so we raised the question initially, I can't remember the exact time, but a few weeks ago through the council that then flowed through the pension fund to obviously manage the pension fund for the council and through to the, actually that's now come back around to the beginning of this week, the end of last week. We've been liaising with our own pension fund auditors as well this week to try and close down the issue. It's a bit of a back-and-forth conversation between relevant people within that pension sphere, for lack of a better term. As I say, I think we've now got what we need. It's just a matter of flowing that through our thought processes in regards to how that estimate is being calculated and whether, as Janet says, the triennial valuation that recently has come out should have an impact on the 2021 valuation. Thank you. So that sounds like the young received the kind of relevant information to say kind of end of last week, beginning of this week. And it's currently kind of cycling round it. Councillor Williams, did you want to comment further? Yes, because I think we're all keen for this chapter of the accounts to be ended and moved on. So with the resources, does EY have enough resources to get that sorted swiftly? Now you've got the information when, how much resources have you got available and when will we actually have a likely outcome. And I say this because we have on agenda item five, obviously one of the recommendations is that committee approve the audited statements of the accounts. And just if we could have, because I think from what I heard was a suggestion that we shouldn't be doing that. So we could have some clarification on that, please. Certainly. I mean, I think my understanding is probably we will not finalise the accounts 2021 today. We might discuss some of the most recent changes to it. And then probably in November, we'll have a very brief item, assuming no further major corrections in which those accounts will be signed at that point. But yes, I don't know if someone from Mets Young wants to comment on that. Councillor Williams has other questions. Sure. Yeah, happy to. So yes, we have the resources in place. And as both Mark and I have been saying, the team is in situ and working through the final pieces at the moment, Councillor Williams. So in terms of resources, we are significantly through the audit. We have enough people just to close down these last pieces of information and to close our audit file. And then the last piece of work, which both are senior Nikki Vella and Mark and I will be working through is the updated financial statements that reflect all of those adjustments that need to go through. And so certainly from our perspective, whilst you've got pretty much the comprehensive picture of which adjustments need to be made on the officers papers, it's important that you see it in situ in writing in the financial statements before you approve those. It would be our view because they are such a number and of significance that need to be flowed through. So that our view would be that it would be wiser to approve the accounts once they fully reflect all of those adjustments. And we do think that that is quite, as I said earlier, quite a tricky process for the officers to work through to get right first time. So but we have people ready and willing and waiting to go through all of those and check that they're done properly. Thank you. Are there any further questions from members at this stage? Just one or two questions from me. Firstly, just on the time, sort of the timelines from here, will Winston Young kind of hypothetically kind of block out some time resource? Do we just need to proceed as if these other debates are not happening and you will block out enough time and resource for a full audit of, say, 21, 22, assuming we don't get the new guidance in time. And then we can obviously unwind that a bit if necessary. Is that your intention to cope with this uncertainty? Our intention is to block out resource to do the financial statements planning work as soon as you're ready for us to do that. And also to update our value for money arrangements assessment for all of the years that are outstanding because we anticipate that whatever happens with the debates that are going on, that's the minimum that we will need to do. And that will then allow us to keep moving our input forward, as it were, while we wait and see. So we're definitely not intending to stop and pause. We will be allocating resources to do that. And that will give us enough time, I think, to be able to get the clarity out of the system that we need to then determine how much more work we need to do on financial statements audits. And to be able to report out on the value for money arrangements up to date, because we do anticipate that that will be, as I say, a bare minimum required under whatever is produced by D-LUC. Thank you. Just sort of looking at the totality of the ordered adjustments that you've identified as part of this. Is there anything you want to draw the committee's attention to in terms of internal controls or any kind of systemic weaknesses in processes, or is it your view that these are kind of isolated incidents? I mean, clearly the investment properties, you know, we rely on our external value, and we've taken that value. That's not, that's not enough. And obviously there's been a disagreement with your own value. So I'm not perhaps so, perhaps not so concerned about that. But in terms of the other statements you've identified, is there anything you want to draw our attention to? Perhaps if I make a more general statement, and then Mark can come in if you've got any particular points. On investment properties, this is the first year that a number of those have been valued. So I think that could be an underlying reason as to why there was a difference in view taken by the specialists initially. I wouldn't anticipate that that would then flow through any further. It was a one-off getting to an agreed basis on which these properties should be valued. I think in general, my observation would be that these are less isolated, more to do with perhaps a lack of understanding by a range of different people involved in putting the accounts together, and whether that's because they're inexperienced in the area that they're trying to close down, or it's information that they actually, you know, it predates their involvement in the organisation and therefore they haven't had the understanding of what was needed to account for the transactions appropriately or to classify them appropriately. So I think it's still the legacy chair of what's the delay around the audit, and probably a lack of attention to detail and quality assurance during the period, as opposed to necessarily the production of the accounts. But Mark, I don't know whether you have a view. I mean, I would add to that, and I think it comes down to giving offices enough time so that obviously we all want to catch up and close down, you know, all the outstanding years as quickly as possible, but it's making sure there's enough time to get the accounts right. Well, it's that first time theory again, and I think some of this could drop out from trying to get accounts out maybe quicker than was practical at that time, given the history of those balances and the legacy nature of those balances. I mean, in our report in section seven, which I think is your page 39 of what you've got, we do list out our control recommendations, which do cover a few areas, including creditors, debtors, employee contracts. And that's it for management system. So, you know, we would hope those recommendations would be taken on board, obviously, by officers going forwards. But I don't think there's much more to add to that. Thank you. I'm sure there will be. Sorry, final questions from me just to Mr Maddock. The investment property where we've had this disagreement. Is that some investment property that's on our books or have we subsequently sold that property? Do you know off the top of your head? So it relates to three properties and one of which we have subsequently sold. Yes. The could we mention there the 21, 22 accounts. My recollection is that this committee has already seen a draft of those accounts. What's your understanding of the current state of 21, 22? So that's kind of ready for instance, young as soon as this previous one is closed down. So we haven't brought the 21, 22 draft here yet. So we're working on that at the moment. The intention is to bring it to this committee as soon as possible after Christmas. So we potentially will need an additional meeting. We're aiming to get it completed by Christmas. I'm going to say we're working to some of the issues at the moment. Just to pick up on Janet and Mark's points. I think one thing that's to my mind has come out of the audience. And it's probably the same point that Mark was making a little bit around the attention to detail. Certainly there's a two or three areas I think we probably need to put a bit more review time into. I think the assets is one and I think capital financing is another. There's one or two areas I think we probably do need to do a bit more work on to make sure for 21, 22. I think we'll hopefully get into a better position. So I think the wash-up session that we hope to do next month will try and pick up some of those points. As I said earlier, I'd like to speak to Mark perhaps in a bit more detail about that. And I think I would probably say there were more adjustments than I would have liked, if I'm honest. Thank you and thank you for that. Councillor Harvey. Yes. Thank you, Chair. It should be a question maybe to Janet Dawson or Peter Maddick or both of my comments on that. Next, Janet touched on a couple of times during the presentation difficulties caused by events that happened, subsequently staff members who have left. I'm just wondering, almost in sort of percentage terms, how important a factor is that in slowing down the bringing forward of final set of accounts is generally staff turnover, excessive staff turnover, if that is ever the case. An important factor to consider and if the team can be stabilised in terms of the average tenure in each post, will that have a significant improving effect on the efficiency of these processes? I might throw that over to Mr Maddick if you would be scared. So I think in the finance team itself we have got a relatively stable force because you're probably aware we have you with us to get us up to date and they've committed themselves to us for the foreseeable future and I think we will need them going forward. I think things have improved in the finance team but I still think we've got some way to go and I think as we said earlier, I think there's possibly a bit of an issue outside finance around particularly the team dealing with investment properties. I think the people are comport and it's been quite a steep learning curve for a couple of people in that team as well and certainly when I spoke to them about three weeks ago they were quite keen to have a little bit of a chat about what it requires about understanding what the processes are so I think they're on board and I think it's just a case of getting them up to speed because I think the chap's been in post about six months or so so I think he'll be fine. I think we just need to spend a bit of time with him to explain how this all works. Thank you. Well, if there are no more comments at this stage, I'd like to thank... Oh, sorry. Thank you, chair. There are just three small points in the accounts. I know they're still in a draft form but I just thought it might be worth just noting them. Note 24, which is the trading operations note, that's referring to 2019-20 so I think that's just a sort of hangover it just needs to be updated if it's still the case that there are no trading operations in 2020-21. That's on page 55, note 24. Note 5, events after the balance sheet date, page 29 of the accounts, page 48 of the agenda. This is events after the balance sheet date and it makes note of the war in Ukraine but the date to this is wrong. The war started in 2022, not 2021 so I'm not sure whether it has any bearing on the accounts at all at this point. I know it feels like it's been going on for longer than it has but it was 2022 so perhaps that sentence should be taken out because it's incorrect. Then the final thing, I just wanted to acknowledge all the work that had happened with the COVID-19 pandemic when you look at a set of accounts from back in the past it can tell you a story about what's actually happened and this was a significant thing that happened in this year and I know that offices across the whole council will have worked incredibly hard under pressure in this time and that doesn't exclude the finance team getting through these grants. I know that this has been an audit risk, we knew it could be an audit risk because of the nature of the work that was undertaken. Thank you for the work that you've done on here and thank you to the staff for all that they did in that difficult time. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Leaming and thank you for those comments on the accounts which I'm sure will be duly corrected. Any other comments at this stage? If we're just on page 23 just to note the chief operating officer I think just a little bit of a check through but otherwise I think the accounts look like very reflective of the year like I know that obviously when it's been revised the chief executive and chief operating officer that's why sort of drew my attention to it given what we were facing in that year as a council I think I'm assuming that that sort of variance is in relation to that. So yes I think it looks on the surface as a reflective of the year that we went through that year. Thank you and I'd like to echo those comments about the hard work that staff put into a very difficult period of time. I'm going to close off item four if that's okay. So thank you to Janet Dawson and Mark Russell for their report. We've been asked to note the progress made on the external model for 2020-21 which we have done so. Item five which we've slightly kind of merged into is the accounts for 2021. I'll throw this over to Mr Malik but my understanding is so we won't formally approve these today. We'll do that at the next meeting but I don't know if you want to make any further comments on the accounts at this stage. That's right so we'll note the accounts as they come and stand but obviously recognising that EY have got to finish all their final procedures and then we'll come back with a final set to I think it's towards the end of November the next meeting so I think it makes sense to lie in the set of separate meeting up. I think we should probably do that at the end of November and it gives us all plenty of time to do what we need to do. So I think recommendation three still stands as it's just noting that this is substantially complete, safe for a few queries in closing procedures so I think that's still the same. The report itself goes through the changes. You'll see that there were a couple of appendices at the which showed the changes from the initial draft that came here at the start of the calendar year. A lot of the changes between that and the draft that was issued for audit were a result as a result of the completion of the previous year's audit. So those were inevitable adjustments we were going to have to make and then B2 goes through the adjustments that were made between that version and the current version. Those are listed from paragraph 6 to 14. I wasn't particularly proposing to go through those line by line but just to note those if anybody's got any questions in particular on any of those items please feel free. I provided a little bit of detail behind what the adjustments are but the overall effect on the balance sheet was to increase the value of the balance sheet by a little over 2.4 million. Having said all of that, since those were published we've had a further adjustment that was explained earlier by Janet and Mark in relation to our investment valuations and it seems that the value didn't take into account that the properties were in fact leasehold, long leasehold rather than freehold. So consequently the values were overstated. I think I'm in agreement with Wattie while saying the proposal is not to go back to the value at further delay by getting them to do some more work because they'll be valued again for 21-22 and the figure will obviously change. So what I will be doing though is speaking to the valuer, making him aware of the comments made by EY's valuation team so that he can go back and review the figures he's given us for 21-22 and I suspect the figure that if he's used the same basis which I suspect he has we may well see a change to the figure that he's given us and then of course we can incorporate that into the 21-22 draft accounts. So that's something I'll be doing over the next few days. Other than that I'm not sure there's anything particular to draw out just whether there's any questions on the adjustments or anything else within the accounts at this stage. Thanks. Thank you Mr Manick. Does anybody wish to comment further on the accounts at this stage or on any of the adjustments that Mr Manick has mentioned? Fantastic. Well thank you again to you and the team for all their work. I know it's still not completely settled but it sounds like we're sort of 99.5% of the way there and we look forward to signing those off at the next meeting. So we've been asked to approve the audit disabled accounts which we won't do at this stage because the audit process is not complete. We've also been asked to note the 2021 accounts audit is substantially complete save for the final queries and closing procedures which we have done. So thank you, thank you everyone for their attention to those major items. We're going to turn now to item 6 which is the key amnesty project. This is being led by the corporate fraud team particularly to tackle social housing tenancy fraud. I believe we're joined remotely by Tara Knopim King and I'd like to invite her to present her report. Thank you. Good morning, thank you. For those of you that aren't aware at the beginning of the year we've actually ran an awareness campaign around the issues that are presenting in terms of housing social fraud. Sorry, social housing fraud. The campaign message was to do the right thing and it gave people an opportunity to give us back property without further prosecution action as part of that campaign. So I won't be reading the document verbatim to you but what I do want to do is just go through some of the key highlights of it with you. So during the month of January we reached over 42,000 people on social media. We also connected and engaged with our tenants for the first time around this issue with a mail shot that went directly to tenants informing them of what social fraud looked like, what the expectations were and I think that is the first time that this authority has ever done anything like that. And I just wanted to update really around what has come from this campaign in terms of how we're taking things forward at the moment. So it's just to provide assurance to everybody really that obviously we do take things seriously. We are trying to work hard to protect our assets and what social housing we do have. So we are due to review our strategy which we'll be going for internal consultation in the next few weeks before it actually comes to the committee for your approval and comments. We've now been able to launch an online form which is far more accessible we think in terms of visibility on our website to make sure that we capture the correct information that we need in terms of reporting fraud. And we're also running a general campaign which is going to be launched with a press release during Fraud Awareness Week from the 12th to the 18th of November 2023 where we continue to take that do the right thing message out into our communities. So yeah, that's just really an update on where we are at the moment. If anybody has any questions then please please feel free to ask me. Thank you. Mr Maddock, you wanted to comment. Yeah, so just to add to that, I mean the project itself was run jointly with the tar and the team and housing. It was a good example of collaborative working. We have seen a significant increase in attempted fraud and fraud over the last few years so it was the right time to do such a project and social housing fraud does appear to be a growing problem. So again, that was one of the main drivers to get this project underway. So I think it was an important project and it was the start of a process about raising fraud awareness and education in the community. There are a number of other things coming along just to raise awareness and education and just making residents and people aware of how they can report their suspicions. So yeah, I think it was a good project but it's the start of something that we're going to be doing a bit more over the next months and years to raise awareness and things like that. Thank you. I'd like to open this up to members of the committee. I believe I've got councillor Heather Williams and then councillor Hal. Thank you chair. I think that this was a good initiative and I think it's something that should continue. I think we owe it to everybody that is on a council waiting list to make sure that they are not being deprived of a house because of people committing fraud against council. I think that we will never be able to fully calculate what prevention, how much it actually saves and I think we have to accept that. But there is, I believe, a moral obligation to the taxpayer and I say those people on the waiting list to make sure that we have a no-nonsense stand on forward. Whether that be the council or when we're doing grants for other people and Tara and the team, you're a small team but you are mighty. And I very much hope that we'll be seeing more projects coming forward from you on for prevention. If we can tackle it before it even starts, that would be the best outcome for all of us. We're doing a lot at the moment. We are doing a lot of work and we're doing a lot of work around data matching at the moment and capturing things early. And there are some other initiatives that we are in the pipeline of looking at so that we can look at those issues around stopping fraud at the inception point. Because obviously that's where it needs to happen. If we can make that happen, we will. Thank you. Thank you both. Councillor Hill. Yes, thank you. I wonder if Tara could give us some examples of the type of fraud that we're encountering. Of course, so within the prevention of social housing kind of context, one of the big ones that you'll hear about is the sublet. So I attended a meeting yesterday actually and there's some really interesting things to highlight the point. And this was actually in one of the London boroughs, but there are instances where to explain what we mean. You've got a tenant who is paying, I don't know, maybe two or three hundred pounds for a flat or some kind of accommodation. And then you're finding it appear on Airbnb as a sublet for accommodation for X amount of people for thousands of pounds worth of income to those tenants. Clearly that's an abuse of that asset. And action needs to be taken to raise awareness around this and what the red flags might be, where to look, how to inform us about it. Like I say, we'd looked at the online forms with transformation to make sure that we are capturing the correct information from the outset. And that's now much more visible and went live last week. So that's a real improvement in terms of the way that people can contact us and give us the information that we need really to get the ball rolling. But yeah, lots more ideas to come. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What do you guys like to comment on this report? Counselor Stovart. Chair, it's really a question. So an excellent initiative. And I just wanted to ask, will it be marked by these in the sense special focuses that the key amnesty project represents? That's the first question. And second, what were the lessons learned that if you did this again, how would it be done differently? Thank you. Mr Manwick, do you want to start with that? It's an interesting one. And I mean, Tara will probably have a better idea than me. I mean, I think the timing was pretty much spot on. We've gone through the pandemic. And I think there was a feeling that during the pandemic, some of these issues were going on. So we felt that was the right time to do it. And there's quite a lot of preparatory work. I think the thinking is we probably wouldn't do the same project for a number of years again. Because I think if you do it every year, it probably loses its impact. So it probably makes sense, as Tara said, to focus on some different initiatives. I don't know, Tara, if there's any lessons learned that you particularly would pick up. Any thoughts? I don't know. I thought it was quite a good project to be able to connect with our internal stakeholders and be able to have conversations around that. And that was really useful. In terms of our approach to it, I'm satisfied. And I think that the approach we took was the correct approach. Particularly if I give you an example, we did write two tenants. And we now have a case where we will be producing those letters that were sent in a proposed prosecution case around social housing. And so that from that point of view, although it was a change to the norm, I still think that that was the correct approach to take. I mean, we're always open to ideas and suggestions, and we can always improve, of course we can. But I think that communications worked really well with us around getting the message out on the social media platforms and were absolutely fantastic around that. So it was fairly coordinated, I think, but always happy to take suggestions if anybody's got any. Thank you. Councillor Harvey. Thank you, Chair. Sort of a suggestion, sort of a question. I think this type of fraud might have been before this committee under a different heading previously. But the type of fraud where a son or a daughter provides funds for their aged parent to exercise a right to buy with the expectation that they will acquire that property when the aged parent passes on and profit from that. And I just wondered, and I think we've had at least one example of that report to the committee before, but there's a remit of this initiative extend to examining sort of going back into the past and seeing if there's wrongdoing in the acquisition of property. Thank you. And from that point of view, with the right to buy, I'm not sure whether you're familiar with what processes are in place, but there actually is a fairly robust process in place because obviously once we've lost an asset, it's very difficult to reclaim that asset back. So it goes through a process with our team and the lady that deals with those applications where we conduct, I won't go into too much detail, but we conduct assurance checks over the information that's on the applications. If we do get any reports of fraud, we are very happy to listen to them and to look into them. And we do have the resources if we need to to go down the road of financial investigation and actually recovering the property as well. It's not within the team, but we have the results available to us. So I think in answer to the question, if something comes to us and we can secure evidence and it is within the public interest for us to take that forward on a past property, then certainly we would do that. If there was an appetite and support for that. Does that answer the question? Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. Any further comments or questions? Mr Maddock. I just wanted to make the committee aware of the TARR attached upon this. We're doing a project, a data matching exercise around council tax discounts and single persons discounts. So this is another area where we're pretty confident there are a significant number of single persons discounts that have been claimed that people aren't entitled to. TARR and the team are doing a lot of work, data matching and following up all of those matches. So that's another project that's sort of come along as a result of the work that's being done in the team. So we'll be reporting back on progress with that within the usual report that we produce. So the quarter two report will be the first one where that project has really got going. So it will be interesting to see how that's progressing. Thank you. Thank you to TARR and the team King for her report. We've been asked to note and comment on the report and we have done so. Item seven invites the committee to consider the council's strategic risk register. I believe we're joined remotely by Mr Kevin Ledger, who I believe is a policy and performance officer for the council if I've got that right. Could I please ask you to present your report? Thank you very much. Yep. So this is the deferred risk report from the July Audit and Corporate Governance Committee meeting. And it provides an update in relation to the risk monitoring and management activities that have taken place over the last 12 months or so, as well as a copy of the strategic risk log at Appendix A. It's worth noting that Cabinet reviewed the strategic risk register at Appendix A at their meeting on the 28th of September, following the deferral in July. And just really say that we've previously said that we'll provide six monthly updates to this committee on risk. So we're planning on bringing an updated risk log to the next committee meeting as well. And the register will be reviewed in advance of that just to make sure that changes and any additions are included within that log ready to come to the November committee meeting. So really that's kind of everything that I wanted to cover by way of introduction. So happy to pass back to the chair for any comments or questions on any aspect of the report. Thank you. I'm not sure there's going to be an enormous amount of sense to then also bring this back to November so we might push it back, particularly if we have say an additional meeting in January in any case. Then we might bring it to that rather than kind of two months on the drop just to kind of keep it kind of more current. So comments on this please. I can see Councillor Heather Williams and then I'll take Councillor Howell. Thank you. Thank you chair. I've got a series of comments. I'll start with the question. What I'm struggling to see and it could be in here somewhere. I'm struggling to see about we have about school shortage, but what we don't have as a risk is if we are not ensuring CPD and training, which is something that I've raised before. I see it as a strong risk to the council that not enough time is given to ensure that colleagues and officers are up to date. But I perhaps that sort of is underpinned in one of these. That's my question. I then have my comments chair, but would you like me to take the question first? Yes, let's maybe tackle that question. I mean, I can see an SRO3, which is the technical skills shortage is one. There is. It doesn't mention funding for professional qualification in there, but I don't know if we want to if it needs to if you think it needs to be made a little more explicit in some way. If I may, yes, because that sort of suggests about skills shortages in the industry. What I'm talking about is not where there's a skill shortage, but ensuring that we are providing enough time for training to keep people up to date. You know, things can change very quickly for finance. You've got new regulations, etc. And obviously that is a risk to the council because, for example, if somebody is not as up to date in planning, it may not be until four or five years down the line when it comes to trying to enforce that consent that actually you would know that was a problem. And that is something that I don't feel sort of covered in that text, but it could be something that is monitored, just not explicitly said. Thank you. I mean, would anybody like to comment on that or do you want to take that as a note to either kind of work in as part of that risk or consider adding a new risk around. If I've understood correctly, the sort of the changing kind of legal landscape in which, yeah, the changing landscape in which the council is operating and the requirements for technical officers to be up to date on the latest development in their sector. Does anybody want to comment on that or shall I move to Councillor Williams to further comments? Sorry, I was just going to jump in and say I'm more than happy to take that away and feed that into kind of the conversations about the upcoming review of risks that is due to take place. So absolutely we'll make sure that that is covered as part of that conversation. Thank you. Turn that to the remainder of your comments. Thank you. So a few comments on three areas, one of which, if we look at page 159, we've got cyber security breaches. I think in the current sort of climate that that's something that really does need a key focus on. I think when we see the way the world is turning at the moment, obviously cyber security is probably more important now than ever before. But in that same note, I am surprised on the IT on 165 because I have to find, say, I have expressed, sorry, 164, I have constant frustrations with the IT and I don't think that's restricted to councillors and members. I think it's something that does need a lot of work. I find the IT very unsatisfactory for myself at the moment and I'm sure others do too. In relation as well to the local plan, emerging local plan, trying to give you the page reference point, but there is something on social media. I think it's been verified of councillors from this council saying that the five-year land supply is at risk due to the change into the making connections decision. And they claim that that is at risk for the emerging local plan. And I'm wondering, I couldn't see any reference to that in here. So is that something that's being taken into consideration? It's page 163. I can provide the information if required about where those comments came from because, as you can imagine, that is a severe risk to the council if you lost a five-year land supply. And then finally, on page 161, while we have on IT reputational damage as a potential resulting factor, we don't seem to have that on the four-day week trial and yet it's quite clear that this has, whatever your views, pro or against, it is having a reputational effect on this council. So I'm quite surprised that that hasn't been included as a potential result. And I'm just wondering whether it's accurate, the scoring, given that the control measure relates to independent research and we've seen that that's obviously is questioned by many. So my views are, I'm pleased to see that the four-day week is being recognised as a risk. I don't think that those mitigations reflect the scoring at all. And I think the use of external independent research has been publicly shown to not give reliable satisfaction to people. They are my comments, Chair. Thank you very much for those. I'll turn to Councillor Hull, if I may, if you wanted to come in with some comments also. Thank you, Chairman. First of all, with regard to cyber security, I'm glad that I was picked up by Councillor Heather Williams. I agree with that. We really, really got to actually knuckle down on that one and be very, very careful. We want that to be extremely boring and not a topic never to come up. It's just dealt with. So I'm glad of that. The one I want to actually discuss is on page 158. And that is the middle one there, red, the non-compliance with council housing legislation. And it starts off at 16 and goes down to at 12. I just want to know if it's possible to have a little bit more information on that. And I'm not expecting Mr Ledger to give me that information. But if it could be transmitted to me or to the whole committee on that particular one, that would be appreciated. Thank you. I think that on that same vein, you've got one on page 161. The new Mears contract fails to deliver service. We've got a spectacular fall of eight points, which I'm chaffed a bit with. And lots of robustness is taking place by the looks of it in that particular risk assessment. And again, if we could have some information on that, please, it would be appreciated. Thank you very much. I'm not expecting it today. No. Thank you, Councillor Hull. I wonder if there have been a number of comments made there. I wonder. I think Mr Meddick, you wanted to respond to some of those. Certainly I can respond on the cyber security issue. It's something we've been discussing quite a bit recently. And I know it's the number one priority on the CICT's list. And certainly TAR and the team have raised their concerns around cyber fraud as well. So I think it's likely that we'll be trying to put some more resources into tackling this issue. Because, as was mentioned, it is a growing problem. And it's, you know, because of its complexity, you obviously need people with the necessary skills to tackle that. And it's something we're looking at. I did just want to point out on page 157, SR15 around cost of living and the finance system. Just the notes and comments. Is that there's an update to the notes and comments? Because the fair fund that we're going to do has effectively been pushed back to 26, 27 now. So that's a change to what's written in here. I think certainly it is regards the housing issues. Thank you. I was just going to add to that. But one of the mitigations on that is audit. So just to give assurance to the committee, that's one of the things that my team does. We regularly review how housing is complying with various different standards. That could be things like gas safety, electrical safety. So just to give you a little bit of a flavour and anticipation of what might come back with more details. You know, we do provide assurance in the hearing. Thanks. Thank you, Mr Toy. That's good to know. Can we just, perhaps, actually just take a note then that the committee would just like some more detail around the control measures? Particularly for, I believe it was the new Mears contract. So that's SR 26. And the housing risk, which I'm now failing. SR 24, no, that's the land supply. Long compliance area, SR 24 as well if we could have just some more detail. I think on the control measures that are going into place to manage those risks. And if that could be circulated to the committee, that would be appreciated. Are there any further comments that we would like to make? Councillor Stobart. Chair, thank you. So it's a comprehensive list. I mean, we've commented on it as the content. And there would always be some small disagreement. But any list like this, it needs to be added to and subtracted from to keep it manageable. So adding requires a kind of diversity of input. And that's coming from all sorts of sources. And I think we might have touched on this in the past. We took that senior leadership team and the cabinet. What are the sources used by the council to make sure this is kept up to date? That's my first question. Second, at what point would we remove something that we no longer regard as a risk? Is there a criterion for assessing that something is no longer a threat? But of course, maybe they come back later. How do we manage this list? Thank you. Mr Legend, perhaps do you have any comments on those questions? Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the process for risks being added to this log, I'll start with that. So below the strategic risk logs, there's a number of service level risk logs. And so this is something that we've really been trying to work on getting in place over the last year to make sure that actually kind of this strategic risk log doesn't kind of isn't formulated in isolation by a small number of people. It's also fed into by those managers and teams who are directly responsible for delivering services. So those service risk logs are kind of the discussion of CMT corporate management team on a regular basis. And from there, we request that members of corporate management team put forward any suggested additions or changes to the strategic risk logs just to make sure that there's that diversity of input from a lot of sources from across the organisation and to reduce the risk of kind of any gaps or blind spots. So that's one kind of approach that we're taking, which we've certainly been working on significantly over the last year. In terms of the process for risks potentially dropping off of this risk log, that would occur at this time. At the time of discussions and review of the risk log. And so I think that it would be kind of primarily informed by the risk scores. So it might be that actually something that's kind of dropped down to a small residual risk score following control measures. It might be seen that that's warrants removal from the list. However, what we want to do is to really make sure that where that takes place, there's complete transparency about that. So certainly any risks that are, if there were any risks that were removed from this risk log at the time of between now and the next review of the risk log at this committee. That would be flagged within the reports that you receive just so that you kind of can see where that has taken place and what the rationale is for that decision having been made. Thank you. Are there any further comments from the committee at this stage? Just to build on perhaps a little of what Councillor Heather Williams had to say. I'm not totally convinced that the two risks that we have in here around the four day week trial are really as precisely targeted at the risks of that trial as they could be. I think, so for instance, SR 31 is the risk that the trial is unsuccessful in achieving its aims of solving the recruitment and retention challenge. I think it may be that this is coming, you know, obviously we're looking at this kind of back in July. I think the risks around the scheme to my mind at least are not in that area. It seems to have already been very successful in solving the recruitment and retention issues faced by the council. So I'm not sure that that is precisely pointing at the risks that are taking part as part of the trial. And I think the description of strategic risk 30 that the four day week trial is stopped prematurely by government. I'm not sure that language is entirely accurate. It's not clear that the government has the power to stop the trial, but there are risks perhaps to our relationship with government and other actions that they might threaten to take. So I'm not convinced that those particularly, I mean, I think the control measures, the control measures perhaps are accurate, but I think those descriptions of the risk don't seem to me to be precisely targeted at what I would assess as the risks of the four day week, excepting that there are a variety of views obviously on the efficacy or otherwise of the trial. I would clarify that I personally would not agree with council how the Williams' characterisation of the team of the University of Cambridge I don't think she'd expect me to agree with that. Councillor how the Williams, do you want to come back on that? Everybody's entitled to their own opinion chair, so that's my view after what's come out that I don't have the reliance on it anymore and that trust has been broken. But I think in light and tone of what you were saying about the narrative around the risks, I think the fact that government have made it clear that they are looking at financial consequences, then that itself should be a risk and there should be a risk attached to looking at what that potentially could look like if funds for example are or we've held for us doing something that they've expressed you said we shouldn't be. Thank you. And indeed, I think to be fair, I think this was as the risk was understood in July 2023 and I can't remember precisely when those first delightful letters started landing on our doorstep. So it may be that this is to be updated anyway. But I hope that I don't know Mr Ledger to those comments that kind of make sense to you perhaps. I mean it may be that you're working kind of to update this as it is. Absolutely those comments do make sense. And yet more than happy to take those forward and feed them into the review. Thank you. Are there any final comments from members of the committee? Fantastic. Thank you. So thank you to Mr Ledger. We've been asked to note the report and make any suggestions regarding the future reporting the council risks. And I believe we've made quite enough for today. Thank you very much. So yes, I think perhaps probably not sensible to bring it back in November unless I'm misunderstanding. But I think perhaps to see it again somewhere sort of three to six months time, something like that. It would be good to hear from you again and see the latest version as it has gone to Cabinet. Thank you very much. Agenda item eight. Sorry, just before we move on to that. Is everyone happy to continue? Does anybody need a break at this point? Are we all good? Let's just take a quick five minute break there. We've been swimming in deep waters for an hour and 15 minutes. Let's just take a five minute comfort break and we'll resume with item eight. So I'll adjourn for five minutes. Thank you. I think we're all ready. Thank you. Thank you, committee. I believe we are on agenda item eight, which provides an update on topical corporate governance methods. Mr Tully, if you would be so kind as to present your report, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, chair, and good morning, committee. This is our usual sort of quarterly update to the committee on all matters to do with governance risk and control. We're starting off on page 169 of our agenda facts. That's where the report starts. What I would do is just bring out some of the key points, which I want to share with you. On page 170, we have our updates of audits, which have been completed in the last quarter. Two there, the first one being Disabled Facility Grants, which is one that we look at each year. It's pleasing again to see that it's full assurance. Things are generally working quite well there. They're still making progress in how they work, which is pleased to see lots of good improvements. The other one is the capital asset register. Again, we've given that reasonable assurance. What I would stress is that what we've been doing is looking at the system and the internal controls in place, and not to confuse it with the discussions we're having earlier on in the agenda about valuations, because that's the work of the external auditors and their valuation experts there. We have a look to the system, and they're using a new system, and it's working very well. Certainly a lot more robust than what the council's had in the past, so it's a very good positive improvement. The one thing we have highlighted and we would like to see is around business continuity, because there's just really a very limited pool in terms of one person who knows how to operate the system in its entirety. It makes great sense from continuity going forward just to make sure that other members of the team are trained up to do that. Really, that's as simple as the recommendation is, but we do feel that's quite important. I think it's part of the development plan that's financed to do that already. What I would also note is that just to make you aware that we are adding a couple of extra bits of work to our audit plan. We're doing some work on learning and development. Again, we discussed a little bit earlier around the risks around that, so we should hopefully be able to provide some assurance in the area. Also, we had a request from central government to do another grant certification this time on a changing places fund. We had a look at that, and we concluded that now. It was after we actually wrote the report and publicised it that that's fine. Just a couple of updates to our plan. On page 176, what I would draw your attention to, is just a couple of interesting items in training and development. Tara mentioned communications and awareness campaigns. We've got an example of that in here. Also, we had risk management on the agenda. You might be interested to have a look. We've signed postage due to the central government risk register. It's well worth being aware of, I think, as members on this committee that it does exist. It's a good bit of training there. That's it. It's the shortest report this quarter, but hopefully you find it useful. Thank you, Mr Tully. This is slightly unfair, but just since we've got you in the room anyway at Mr Manwick, do you want to comment on the rollout of the new capital asset programme, a sort of process, and how the team is going to be adapting to using it? So, yes, the asset register system has brought a vast improvement to the way the head port says that we held it on a series of spreadsheets, very clunky. Actually, it was prone to error, if I'm honest. The asset register system is supported and provided by SIPPO. Obviously, they produce the accounting code, so if they don't know how the system should work, then nobody does. The system is robust. It's probably the most complex area of the account, but you do need a proper and robust database. At the moment, we've got two people that know how to work for the asset register. We need to increase that to three, so we're going up as idiots there. So that's something we'll be doing over the next few months. There's still quite a lot of preparatory work to get stuff ready to load into the system. It can be a little labour intensive, so I think there's a bit of work to be done there to make that a bit more seamless. Again, one of our colleagues who's joined us in the accounts has experience in other asset registers, and he's got some ideas on how we might improve that side of things. So I think the speed of getting information in the system is such a really expensive, but overall, I thought the audit report... Thank you. Can I just check the two, essentially three individuals are these permanent members of staff, or are these interim members of staff as well? So they will be permanent members of staff. Last question from me. You just highlighted there getting information into the system. What's the process like for getting information out of the system and posted onto the general ledger, for instance? So the system actually produces all of the entries that we need for the accounts. Again, there's a slightly manual system to do that. I'm actually sure there's a massive amount we can do on that side of things. Again, it's something worth looking at, because if we can export it straight to our general ledger, then that will save time. I'm not aware that it does, but it's obviously something we can investigate. Thank you. I think those are the comments from members of the committee on any of the items in this report. Councillor Lee. Thank you, Chair. On page 276, it mentions the new Government Department off-log. I wondered what guidance or documentation that they have sent out since they were launched in July. Have you heard anything from them? Yes, sorry. They've published a number of metrics. Two of them I'm particularly unhappy. I do think they've rushed this rather, and they need to think carefully about, if we're comparing authorities, we need to compare apples with apples, and some of the metrics they're using. I think there's a number of authorities who will be speaking to off-log. The example I'm referring to is that all local authorities that have a housing revenue account, appear to have, in their terms, excess borrowing, but they're comparing borrowing to a general fund measure only. So, again, you're comparing HRA and general fund figures with a general fund measure. So, they need to think again about that metric. With the housing revenue fund, the way that operates vary dramatically depending on what sort of housing portfolio and general behaviour are in each council if you've got council housing, or you haven't, for instance. All authorities who haven't got housing revenue look as if their borrowing is much more proportionate to the core spending power, whereas if you've got a housing revenue account, it looks like it's not proportionate. Of course, the housing revenue account is a ring-pence account, and the borrowing that the housing revenue account has undertaken is based on a long-term 30-year business plan, and it is a completely separate issue to the core spending power, which is just about the general fund, so it's quite... They do need to look at that metric because it's showing all authorities with a housing stock that's having, in their terms, excessive debt. And those aren't without excessive debt, and you're just not comparing apples with apples. And there's been some... I don't know whether you say there's been a little bit in the press about us in the city council having disproportionate debt, and it's all around this issue. And it's at every level of party with a housing account. It's misleading at best, I think. Yes, thank you, Mr Melik. Clearly the local government system in this country is very diverse and complex, and it's slightly befuddled on you, our new regulator. Councillor Harlaw, I believe you want to come up next in the election, Councillor Harlaw. Thank you. I'm a little bit... I've got to be careful, this is going to be more of a statement than a question. But the fact of the matter is that we mustn't forget it is the government that give us a £205.5 million debt upon our HRA, and we have the second highest in the country with £33,000 per property. We were zero, and so it would be a little bit... I've got to be very careful what I'm saying here. I'm a bit peeved if they then make this an issue for us that we could deal with when we weren't like that. Other authorities, of course, had borrowed on their HRA, and then they've had an extra debt put on top. But our debt was to take that. We took that debt to lower other people's debt. So, historically, we should remind them of these things as well, that they've been... You know, they're the ones who give us that debt in the first place. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Harlaw. Councillor Harvey, then I'll come to you. Just a sort of really overarching thing. It could equally perhaps apply to the risk register we were discussing previously, but I'm just wondering about AI, because that's something that seems only six months ago we were all playing around with chat GPT and stable diffusion. And it is gradually dawning on everyone that this is a real technology, which that too risks our failure to use the benefits it could deliver or the failure to recognise the threats that it poses. And I just wondered, I mean, probably early days, but whether that should be, or perhaps it already is, sort of being introduced as a new theme or so ready for life. Thank you, Councillor Harvey. I mean, Mr Turley, do you have a sense of the kind of AI readiness of the council if that's not an entirely unfair question? Clearly a lot of the merging areas all the time on this. I'm professionally, I can speak to myself first, you know, in our profession sector, there's lots of training going on about it. There's been an IA conference last week, which it was covered in many, many sessions. So IA Institute for internal auditors. So, you know, it's a very, very hot topic. And I know that people are very much considering it at the council, but in a safe way, because you obviously need to safeguard data and make sure that it's handled properly. So there are conversations going on. And yeah, which is what we want to hear, isn't it, that we're being prepared, I think. Thank you, Mr Turley. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you. And I think there'll be a lot of agreement and sentiment in the words that Councillor Howell has said from most people in the room and beyond. But I just wanted to say thank you because I appreciate I was quite determined in my thoughts on training and making sure that we know and I see that officers have reflected that. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor Heather Williams. Are there any more comments from members of the committee? There's one final comment I'd like to make just because you drew our attention, Mr Turley, to the issues around kind of future extreme weather as a kind of key threat to the UK. I wonder perhaps if you might like to discuss with sort of Mr Ledger and the chief operating officer whether we're adequately assessing that in our risk register at the moment. I don't recall if it's on my head seeing anything around extreme weather. I think there's perhaps a fire at our HQ building here but there are probably other extreme weather events which could have a serious effect on the ability of the council to meet its needs and just whether we're fully as abreast of that as we need to be. Thank you. So thank you to Mr Turley for his report which we've been asked to note and we have done so. Item 9 invites the committee to consider the Treasury Management activities in the financial year 2022-23 which will be followed by item 10 which is a Treasury Management performance report for the most recent, the Ended Quarter. I don't know if you want to take them sort of both together or do you want to? We'll take this question. That's fine. Perhaps Mr Meddick could please present with a report on the financial year 2022-23. So you'll see that this is the final position for 2022-23 and paragraph 5 shows the net borrowing position at the end of that year and you'll see the net position came down reasonable amount between the years partly because 10 million of our borrowers keep on and we also had additional money in our investments and that was partly related to the sale of one of our investment properties. Page 6, there's a sort of more detailed list of our investments over the two periods and again you can see the movements between the years. There's a number of other tables in there. I think overall our provisional out-turn on page 23 you'll see that our provisional out-turn for those areas was about half what we had originally budgeted so that was good news and most of that was around interest receivable what we did particularly well on. Other than that, I don't think there's anything, it's obviously a little while ago so it's a little bit out of date now but nevertheless it just gives a review of the previous financial year so there wasn't any questions on anything in there in particular. Thank you, Mr Maddy. Do you have any comments on this from the committee Councillor Heather Williams? Thank you Chair. Just on page 190 we sort of reflected on it ourselves about the uncertainty around finance and local government. Obviously we've got a list of local authorities. We have seen some local authorities get into difficult financial positions and I'm just wondering how often are we reviewing this and what due diligence and checks are we doing because it feels like it's potentially not the most stable list at the moment. No, so we do maintain a list of authorities and we do section 114 statement and section 114 but we also have a list of other authorities that have put out warnings. Now a lot of the warnings they've put out aren't specific but you might get a warning saying we're struggling so we have what we can and we've noted all of those down so we're aware of what those authorities are and we also speak to our Treasury advisors because they obviously get information so they would potentially tip us off if there was a particular authority or if there was any difficulty. So we are aware pretty much on a daily, weekly basis which authorities are potentially in difficulty. Thank you. If I can just interject briefly on this point. If we have lent money on a short term basis to a council and issues a section 114 notice what's our security in that position? What's our effect? Are we likely to take losses? Are we likely to face delays in repayment? It's not a full bankruptcy. I can't immediately understand what our position would be. It's something we need to be aware of. We did have some money out with Slough and we issued a section 114 back where that was probably over a year ago now and we got our money back in full. It doesn't appear to be any real risk of not getting your money back not in the same way as we saw with the Icelandic Bank situation. Obviously we speak to our Treasury advisors there's always a risk that we've got money out but certainly there haven't been any instances where the money hasn't come back and obviously other authorities have been in the situation. Slough, I think the money was due back about a week after they announced it so we got the money back. Obviously it was a little bit of a worry at the time. Thank you. I wonder perhaps it might be helpful in the list of counterparties whether we want to just distinguish between the different types of local authority a little more carefully and thinking particularly whether it would be worth categorising them as upper tier authorities or lower tier authorities because I believe I'm right in saying that most of the councils getting into difficulty at the moment are those with those social care and educational special needs responsibilities that are generally the upper tiers or the unitaries. I wonder if perhaps just so we've got a sense of the risk profile of what we're engaged in that might be helpful. I think that's a good idea. Sorry, I interjected there. Councillor Williams. Thank you. See everything is on page 183 about paragraph 20 about liquidity. It's averaging £11.6 million, which is good. I'm just wondering what our lowest threshold has been through the year. Paragraph 20. So we've got the average but obviously averages can be... there are... can be sort of... not because of the reflection. What is the lowest that our cash... cash in the bank has got to through the year? That might need answering... written, I don't know. We set a billion with a seven. If we were to ever drop below seven... does it say in the report... if it was to drop below seven, I would obviously need to be... perhaps if we could... a written responses to what threshold it got to. Yes, I think that would be helpful. Perhaps in future reports we could just report the minimum level of liquidity over the year. I think that's probably a more important metric than the average. Thank you, Councillor Williams. Are there any more comments on the annual Treasury report? Fantastic. Thank you very much. Mr Malik, from the Treasury report, we've been asked to note an comment and we have done so. Item 10 is the kind of more up to date. This is the Treasury management performance report for the quarterly period, to the 30th of September 2023. So, pretty hot off the press in terms of what this committee looks at. Mr Malik, would you like to present this report? So, one of the advantages of delaying the committee a couple of weeks was that we were able to quickly get this report off financing. As Mike said, it really is quite up to date. So, again, we've got... Paragraph 18, we've got a list of the summery of the counterparty we've got with our short-term investments. A little bit less out than we did have at the start of the year. We've also got our long-term investments, and again, that's the total. Sorry, that's the state of the same. So, overall, the total has dropped very slightly. You've also noted, Paragraph 29, that our short-term buying has come down by a further 10 million. So, this time last year, we were at 50 million, and we're now at 30 million. I think we've debated on a number of occasions about short-term versus long-term buying, and I think it's probably the same thing. So, I think it's probably the same thing. On a number of occasions about short-term versus long-term buying, and I think it's probably demonstrates the advantage of some short-term buying, particularly if you think you might mean 50 now, but you might... So, you're not saddled with debt that you're paying that you don't really need. So, I think we're expecting it to get to perhaps 35 by the year-end, but again, it'll be 15 million or so lower than we had at this time last year. So, our total external debt is now at 235 million. Paragraph 32 is a number of measures we use and budgets that are related to Treasury. You'll see that our interest payments we're now expecting it to be half a million less than we originally predicted, and this is primarily driven by the fact that we've got less borrow general from borrowing now than we thought we were going to have, and the interest rates have countered that slightly. But of course, because of the increase in interest rates, our investment income we're expecting to be about 200,000 more. So, good news on the budget from is about 700,000 either reduction expenditure or increased income on our original 23-24 budget. I think that's probably all to say. We've got a list of the current counterparty, I think. Oh, yeah, it's appendix A, and the usual advice is economic update reports. Thank you, Mr Medic. So, I was just looking at the... Let me find the right table. Yes, this was the table at 29. So, is this the first time that the short-term borrowing and interest rates have gone above the long-term borrowing? I feel like, well, that's a fairly recent change to any rate. So, obviously the long-term borrowing rate is a historic rate. I need to check with my colleague. I think long-term rates are currently still slightly higher than short-term rates, but at one time there was quite a big gap. There's not such a good argument for going short-term rather than long-term if you're looking at financing long-term assets, but there's still the issue around. You don't really want to go out long-term if we know we're not going to be the million in three years' time. So, it's still a little bit about you go short or long-term. Thank you. And that interest we're paying on our short-term borrowing of 3.7%, how does that compare to the interest receivable side of things in terms of, say, our investments with other councils? So, we've actually discovered in the last few days that local authorities are offering better rates on investments than banks. So, up to a few weeks ago, it was the only round. And at the moment, we can actually invest for slightly higher than what we're paying on our borrowings. So, I can't remember what it would be. I think we can borrow it around 5.3 to 5.4 at the moment. Thank you. Any comments from the committee on this quarterly update? Thank you, Councillor Stobart. Chair, thank you. So, a question that's a right of the end, paragraph 50 on page, agenda page 203 about engaging advisors. So, in the way that advice is obtained for our investment programme, it would be interesting to know how risk is managed around that, how there's a diversity in the advice received, and also check some balances in how the advice is applied. So, we're just a general commentary on how we take advice, how we make sure it's good, and what are some of the lessons learned in this process? Thank you, Councillor Stobart. So, we get regular updates from Link, who are our Treasury advisors. Generally, on a weekly basis, they'll list the counterparties that they would advise us not to necessarily invest with those that we would. We also speak to SEPFA. So, whilst we take their advice initially, we will run that through some of some other checks around information we get from SEPFA. Also, we do actually look at the financial times and times and times. So, there's other information out there that we use to counter against what Link is saying. Generally, we've not seen any differences in views. So, if Link are advising that we don't invest with a certain counterparty, we'll probably see similar advice elsewhere. So, there are a number of other things that we look at. We have fairly regular meetings with our Treasury advisors. So, we'll probably do another one fairly soon. So, it will be interesting to see what their take is on the long-term versus short-term borrowing because that's something that changes in time. But, yeah, there's other people we use to advise what Link is saying. Thank you. Any further comments? No, thank you. Thank you, Mr Matic, for presenting this report. So, we've been asked to note your comment and we have done so. Item 11, the Matters of Topical Interest. I believe Mr Talik, you want to briefly raise the independent member issue at the stage in the meeting? Thank you, Chair. So, I imagine that probably a lot of us were at the council meeting last week, but it obviously makes good sense to just note for the committee that there are reports which we reviewed here about the independent member that went to Civic Ffares and then it followed on from Civic Ffares to Full Council where it was debated last week. So, I think, in principle, it's improved the next challenges for us as officers to define the term resident. Once we've done that, we can start to progress with the appointment and recruitment stage of it. I don't have anything else to add, but I think it was important that we sort of just note that. Yes, thank you. I think when we've got this resident issue sorted, it might be good just to update the committee perhaps at our next meeting as to how we might, the structure of the recruitment and centre process and kind of member and officer involvement just in the full committee has kind of confidence in the process to find someone to join our merry ranks. Does anyone else have any topical matters of topical interest they want to raise at this point? Thank you. So, final item is the date of the next meeting. The next meeting is scheduled to be held on the 28th of November at 10am. Thank you all very much for attending today. I declare the meeting closed.