 Rydw i'n broboedol i ddweud yn ganllun o'r ddweud i'r cyflosfennyddol ac yn ddylch i'r cyflosfennyddol. Shadow of the Feir Cymru er mwyn i bleidio i ni, roedd yn cyflosfennyddol yn dda. Mae'n bwysig o'r ddweud i ni'n ddull yn cyflosfennyddol, ond gallu tekst yn y ddechrau, yn yr ègffaith ymlaen o'r cymdeithio, yn gweithio am y trafodaeth o'r cyllideisio. A'r cymyn yr ad Keyser yn cymrydol i hynnym yn cymrydol, ac mae'r trafodydd a hyffordd cymentai ydych chi'n cael gwyllgor, fyddai ddychrau'n sylwg ac os ydych chi'n gweithio cael y rhanon sydd hynny. Fyddai'n fydd wedi ei ddim yn gweithio a'r gweithio, iddyn nhw'n gweithio i'w pryd ac yn ei ddych chi'n gweithio'n gweithio, dweud o'ch yn hoffaeth i ddechrau ti'r tynno l Complet yn gallu'r gweithio ar y sgolfer. Wrth gyd yn dduch yn ôl, dweud oherwydd, yn cael ei wneud o'r llwyll iawn o'r cyfnodol o'r cyfnodol yn cael ei gwych yn yr un i'r rhai, a'i gwybod o'r cyfnodol yma i'r cwm-gwysig. A chi'n gwybod ychydig i adreffu'r gweithio, yn cael ei wneud y cwm-gwysig o'r cyfnodol i'r cwm-gwysig, ac yn cael ei ddylu'r cyfnodol byddwn yn ysgolio. Mae'r cyfnodol yn cael ei gwybod, ac yn cael ei fod yn cael ei ddweud, o'r cyfnodol i'r cyfnodol.又 mae newydd fawr i those Autun 1 o'r agender o'r bobiau c overcome telchidiaeth yma? Mae hynny han Knighton 1 o agender o hija gelatinary seedsau deptol, Norrhyw iawn坐r Maen nhw'n Copper Newytaf o hyd! Norrhyw iawn a chyflwp roedd pa gwbl pan-av singlesio'r training. Arrhyw ni' SFOkay Shoa,お plac, parece unid o bobi a oyster ynddechicken a blaen hon. Gwyddo'n gynaethir? Thank you, Chair, I have my usual general declaration of interest as a non-rimunrated director of South Cams Ltd trading as Urban Street housing. Thank you, thank you Chancellor Sanford. Item three minutes of the previous meetings and we have got two sets of minutes to check today so first of all the minutes of the meeting held on the 15th of January. anyboddi haf anycorections ddylingoddol i'ch gwasanaeth gyrfa ar rhaid i'w pamwyr sy'n gweithio'r cymdeithasol. Diolch i'r pethau. Diolch i'r ddiwrsiau'r cyfrifiadau o'r ddweud i ddechrau'r ddoddau Rhyw Llywodraeth sy'n gweithio'r cyfrifiadau o'r ddoddau cyfrifiadau. Rwy'n credu y gallai gyfnoddau'r dreil o'r cyfrifiadau o'r ddoddau cyfrifiadau. Rwy'n credu â'r hynny. Can we just take that away and just check that we have the right interests there. I appreciate all these different interrelated companies. We have to keep those straight. Any further comments on those minutes? Now you are happy for me to take those as approved? Thank you. We also have the minutes of the extra meeting on the 21st of February. Roedd ni'r gwerthoedd o'r syniadau? Roedd yma, yn swyddfyniadau i gael gweld rhywleidau? Roedd yn i. Mae Ard remaindur iawn, i chi hynny am y rhaglen o'r Fener â Llyfrwydd o penodol i ddwylog, oes i ddim ddau. Roedd ddiddordeb hi'n gwybod rôl i, Ac mae'n hwn yn ymdillol i syniadau i gael â'r rhwng. Ddweud ychwanewch, dechreu ac wrth gŵr ar y dyfod. The purpose of this report is to seek committee approval on the current policy wording, noting that there are no updates from when it was last approved, this time last year, and to provide an update on the use of RIPPA powers since the committee last met. RIPPA regulates covert investigations by local authorities and was introduced to ensure that individual rights are protected, whilst also ensuring that law enforcement and security agencies have the powers they need to do their job effectively. Since 2012, all local authority surveillance authorised under RIPPA has to be approved by a magistrate, and the council's policy and procedures were amended at that time to reflect these changes. The Investigatory powers commissioner's office is responsible for the inspection of public authorities with regards to compliance with RIPPA. The council was the subject of a remote inspection on the 24th of February 2021, and the report concluded that the information provided demonstrated a level of compliance that removes, for the present, the requirement for a physical inspection. The inspector also commented that the policy was a well-written document and easy to read. There have been no changes to the legislation since the last revision of the policy in March 2022. Furthermore, the council has not used its RIPPA powers from the period December 22 to February 23. So, members, the recommendations are contained in page 13 of your report, and they are at A to approve the council's RIPPA policy at Appendix A, and B to note that the council has not used its surveillance powers between December 22 and February 23. Chair, that is my report, and I'm going to leave it there. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do any members of the committee wish to comment on the report? Councillor Williams. Thank you, Chair. There's nothing in particular only to note that this will be the last time that Rory is with us for this meeting. So, thank you, and I do think we should have made him wait to the end, as we normally do, Chair, as it was his last one, but I'll forgive that, as it's a short meeting. And thank you for all the support you've shown this committee. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, councillor. It's a very much like to echo those sentiments. It's been a pleasure working with Rory for the last year, and I know that councillors here have worked with him for longer than that, and we were very sorry to see him go. Are there any further comments on this item? Councillor Markham. Well, I'm not going to let Rory go so easily. I'm going to make him work until the last minute. No, very simply. Thank you, Rory, for this report. Rory, do we often use it much? I mean, I've never really seen much use of it. We used to do a bit of it with a flytip and with some other bits and pieces. Could you give some examples where we've used this in the past? Thank you. So, thank you, Chair. Councillor Hyle has indeed decided to put me on the spot at my last meeting, so thank you for that there. I think it's fair to say the RIPPA powers have not been used in the last number of years. I can't give, well, I probably wouldn't be allowed to give specific examples of when RIPPA had actually been used because the information contained within that would have been confidential, but Councillor Hyle has right that in the past it would have been used primarily, I believe. To try and catch incidents of flytipping, certainly in areas where it was difficult to try and work out who was actually causing the issue. Thank you, Chairman, and I, too, wish Rory the very best of success for the future. Well done, Rory. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hyle. Any further comments? Thank you, Chair. I noted on a couple of pages, it's just some questions about language, really, on sort of page 26, and a few after that there's a use of gendered language in the policy. I wondered if it was possible to reword that slightly so there's a bit where he covertly discloses information. Oh, sorry, it starts on 25, actually, and he establishes, he covertly uses, and then on 27, asking him. So, there's nothing major, it's just a few cases where there's he's in hymns. I think page 25, 26, 27, 28. And then I also had a question about the SRO and that being the chief executive. And then I think it says on page 19 that the chief executive is the SRO, and then throughout the report it uses chief executive. An occasion uses SRO, but most uses chief executive. But then when I get to the end, I see that our SRO is our chief operating officer. So I just wondered if that needed some clarification, especially as there's a reference to the chief executive officer having a deputy of the chief operating officer. So I just thought that might need some clarification. Thank you. So thank you, chair. So in regard to the use of the gender language, I apologise for that, and I'm more than happy to take that away and make sure that that is corrected throughout the document. In relation to the point about the SRO, that is the chief operating officer. And again, I'm more than happy to take that away and have a look at it because it would be the onions worth as the SRO and not the chief executive. Now there might be instances where the chief executive is required to take separate decisions, which would be separate and distinct from the chief operating officer as the senior responsible officer. But again, I'm happy to take those away and have a look at them. Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to delegate authority just to make those changes and just clarify exactly where those responsibilities lie. So if you can make those changes and I guess we'll see it again in 12 months in any case and we can check that those have all gone through. Thank you, chair. Thank you, councilor. We may wonder, we're very grateful that you've clarified exactly who's responsible for what it's that kind of thing that can really trip you up if it's ever contested. Are there any further comments on the policy or the lack of use of powers in the last couple of months? I'm not seeing any further comments, so we have been asked to note that the council has not used surveillance powers, which we have done, and we're also asked to approve the council's RIPR policy as contained in the appendix A of our agenda today. Are we happy to approve the policy with the amendment suggested? Thank you. Members, we're now on agenda item 5, the governance risk and control updates. Could I please ask Jonathan Tully to please present this report? Thank you very much, chair, and good morning to you and the whole committee. I hope you are well. This is our regular update on governance, risk and control matters, starting on page 45 of your agenda packs, getting straight into the details. The first thing we have is the internal order updates, and there were three items to report to you at this time. On page 48, we report back on our review of carbon management strategy. This is a new review. We look at data quality of carbon management on a regular basis, but this is the first time we've looked at the strategy. It's going well. The data is good and robust, but we do recognise it's going to be challenging going forward, so what we've agreed with the team is to have some programming reports in the future. I think it is a long term piece of work, so we may wish to complete another review closer to the target time of delivering the strategy, but it's off to a good start. The next one on page 49 is the National Ford Initiative, known as the NFI, Data Quality Report. We recently, at the end of last year, submitted 266,000 records to the Cabinet Office as part of this two-yearly exercise. As part of that process, we reviewed the data so we can complete a data quality assessment of the information held by the council. The headline here is that there's been an improvement in data quality since the previous submission back in 2021, which is good news. There's still opportunities to improve the quality of the data in some areas. That's probably quite typical. I would say this is more about making sure that data is held in consistent ways so that we can work smarter across the organisation rather than problems with the data itself, but it's something worth being aware of as we continually want to improve the way we work. The key thing with this, I think, is that the date was good enough standard for the Cabinet Office because they do introduce financial penalties if it's submitted late or it's not so good enough quality because it can really undermine the whole National Ford Initiative process, which involves all the councils nationally. So the fact that it's good for that and we haven't been penalised is some very good source of assurance there too. Moving on, the next one is the grant assurance energy rebate schemes. So this is another grant scheme that we've recently operated at the council. As part of that, what we did is that we reviewed the internal controls in place and we also sample tested a selection of payments. Everything was okay and so that provided assurance to Peter as the Section 151 officer that adequate processes are in place and then that could be fed back to central governments as we were distributing the grants on their behalf. So moving on on page 50 of the report, this is where we like to just give you an indication of our current work in progress and upcoming work. And then moving on from that, on page 51, we've included a little bit of an update on the National Ford Initiative. I hope you find this useful. What I wanted to do was illustrate the volume of matches that have come back from the NFI exercise. What I must stress is that these are not cases of fraud and errors. They could be, but they could also inevitably be a large amount of what we call false positives where data has been matched and it's something that we need to look into, but it could very well be a legitimate and rational way explanation for it. And this comes back to my other point about data quality being important because if we submit good quality data, it should hopefully reduce the volume of matches that we have to look at. If it's poor quality data, we'd probably expect a lot more matches. So I thought that would just be useful if the committee to get a flavour of what that looks like. Also on page 51, we made reference to the latest guidance from SIPFA on audit committees and since drafting this report, we've had a catch up session with the committee where we've done an evaluation against the SIPFA toolkit. Moving on on to page 52, we have the counter fraud update which is provided by our fraud team. So there's hopefully some useful statistics on there and you can see how it's progressed since the previous reports. And then moving on finally, what we have on page 56 is recent updates. So we've got a very good positive news story about preventing a right to buy fraud, which our fraud manager was keen to share with you. And then also on page 57, we just provide some topical news stories, which we hope you find useful in trying to stay abreast of governance risk and control matters. And again, our fraud manager was keen to include one on breaking the chain, which provides an update of some professional developments in the sector. So I hope that's a useful update. Happy to have comments or questions from the committee. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Tully. It's quite a lot to dig into here, some of the work that's been carried out. So yeah, keen to take some comments from members of the committee. I think Councillor Heather Williams, you wanted to comment. Thank you, Chair. I think there's, we've obviously got the areas of progress which shows some movement, but we've got some new assurances in. But one thing I just wanted to raise on page 55, and I'm not doubting that this is the case, but it's something that when we have the task and finish group we looked into. So it's a particular area of interest, shall we say for myself? On whistle blowing, there has been no referrals, which is good, and what we would expect to see. I'm just wondering from the work that we've done before, whether it's worth though just checking that we have had some turnover of staff and also with remote working and the re-layout of the building. If we, before we did some work about how we signpost and make sure it's clear to people where they go. So I'm just wondering with the sort of reorganisation, I know we talked about putting things on the back of toilet cubicle doors, for example, how we got the right things in the right places, because I want to see zero always, but I want to make sure it's correct as well. People know where to go. Thank you, Chair, that's all from me. Thank you, Jonathan. Did you want to comment on that? I would just echo and say that I agree with Councillor Williams' comments there. It's always a good opportunity to continue review how we're promoting it. We have actually had one referral case come in since writing the report, so which that will appear in the statistics for the next report back to the committee. So hopefully that's also a little bit of evidence, at least that the message is getting out there. But yes, fully agree. Thank you. Yes, hard to say what the desired number of whispering claims is in a particular period, but yes, if it was always zero perhaps we'd be right to ask some questions about that. Oh sorry, Councillor Howe. Yes, thank you. Looking at this report, how do we not compare against comparative district councils? Do you have any idea at all? Thank you. Can I just check, Councillor Howe, is that with regards to whistleblowing still? In general, no, not just whistleblowing with regards to forward in general. Well, with the full statistics I'll probably have to bring in my colleague Peter on that to look at the whole thing holistically. What I can say with the NFI, because I'm the key contact on that in terms of records, we're broadly comparable with other councils. What I also do is a comparison of statistics and data to the previous exercise. And again, I would say it was broadly comparable. It had gone up in some areas, it had gone down in others. But overall in totality about the same volume of records and matches we're coming back. No distinct trends or changes since last time. That's fine, thanks John. Thank you. Does anybody else have comments? They wish to raise that, Councillor Howe. Yes, thank you chair. Well, I think this is part of the section we're discussing on page 56, the preventing of a specific right to buy fraud, which, well, first of all, well done because that's a significant amount of money. But I wondered, as we were discussing in the training session, that Jonathan, your department is a shared service. I wondered, did that come about because of, we have a certain kind of cross flow of information between city and south camps. Is that something that we might want to encourage with other neighbouring authorities or the county council for example? To what extent do we share information to reveal these kind of things? And should we do more of it? Thanks. Yeah, I think it's always handy to share data with other organisations and share intelligence. We also need to make sure that we do it in a lawful way, in a way that's fair, but anything that's going to help get a success and try and prevent fraud in areas is a very positive thing. The National Fraud Initiative is a great example of that, obviously being done on a national scale. But I'm always keen to explore opportunities to do it with more regularity. With neighbouring organisations. There are always sort of opportunities to review that in progress. I don't know if Peter wants to add anything more about the fraud team and some of the activities that have got going on there, but I would agree it's something always worth pursuing. Yeah, so I mean, this incident in particular was really quite pleasing because we made the decision when the corporate fraud team was set up to make some additional checks on right to buy applications. There's standard checks that you have to do by law, but you can do additional checks, so we made that decision to do that. And this is probably the highest profile case we've had, but we believe there are others where further questions have been asked and the application has then been withdrawn. We don't know why it's been withdrawn, but we're fairly confident that in those cases they've realised, yeah, let's withdraw the application. So we've been doing quite a lot of work on right to buy, and we're actually doing quite a lot of work on housing fraud generally because this does seem to be a growth area. And as Jonathan said, you know, talking to other authorities about what they're doing and sharing ideas. I mean, the recent key amnesty, for example, we spoke to a couple of London boroughs about that because they were interested in doing that. So there's quite a lot of talking amongst other authorities around fraud initiatives, fraud prevention, and things like that. And there's always things that we can learn, but equally I think people can learn things from us, so I think it's been pretty good really. I think it's fair to say a number of authorities probably haven't got the level of the size of the 14 that we've got, but I think more and more authorities are coming to terms with the fact that actually we do need to put more resource into this area because it does seem to be a growing problem, unfortunately. Thank you. Very fair to go on. Councillor Lee. Thank you, Chair. I'm not quite sure whether this is a question to Jonathan Tully or Peter Maddock. I'm just referring to the paragraph at the bottom of page 57, which is about external audit timetables. So in this paragraph it's been highlighted that nationally the completion of audits on time has dropped from 97% in 2015 to 12% in 21-22. And then it goes on to talk about how the Financial Reporting Council will be succeeded by an audit reporting and governance authority. And I wanted to ask whether this change, what sort of impact the change in this body would have on us and our audit processes? Thank you. So, yeah, we had a letter in from D-Luck or whatever they call themselves. And they published that only today, only 12% of audits for 21-22 were completed on time, which only 12%. So, you know, it's quite clear that there's a real issue around being able to audit authorities in a timely fashion. And it was interesting that the review was suggesting that actually the emphasis needs to shift away from getting current audits over the line on time to clearing up some of the backlog. So in response to this, we've had a meeting with the auditors. The audit for 2021 will be starting in June. We haven't got an exact date, but I believe it's going to be the first week of June. We'll be coming back to this committee, well, the next committee, which is July, I think, we'll be coming back with a full plan on how we intend to catch up. And it's going to need proper commitment from the auditor. So there, you know, we're going to come up with a plan and we're going to have to agree that plan between us. And then the committee can have sight of that plan and that plan will have to be set in stone, because basically central government is saying, look, let's get this sorted out. I think it's fair to say that, not just any way, but all of the audit firms have been really struggling, particularly over the last two to three years. And as you can see, it's quite a stark reduction, isn't it, when you consider 97 down to 12%. So the idea is that the new body will hopefully shake things up a bit. But, you know, the real issue, I think here, is with audit firms being able to recruit and keep good auditors. Anyway, speaking to EY recently, they've had a couple of people resign even now. So I think it's a real challenge, but hopefully the new arrangements will improve things. They certainly need to. Thank you very much for that update. Thank you. Any further comments? Councillor Redwell? Sorry, thank you, chair. I had a question on a few different areas. Sorry, it's probably because I'm new and don't understand so much. But on page 48 for the carbon management strategy update, I was wondering what was the high action this is one high action and I wasn't sure quite what that meant. And then in the summary, I was wondering if we're talking about that the council's targets are realistic, if that's the council's emissions or if it's the district's emissions or if it's both the council's and the district's emissions. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you, councillor. Yes, the high level action, first of all, that was to agree that further reports would come back to the council to keep them updated. The targets are based on the council's targets emissions because that's something that's within our control. Of course we do anticipate that we want to help reduce them throughout the district as well. So I think you can just jump in. Did you set timelines for when those reports should be produced and presented to council? Yes, we did. We did. I don't have that right up in front of me, but I can provide that to committee if you like. Because people know, rather than generally, between now and 2030, I think, don't give people a bit more specificity when it happens. Sorry, councillor Redrup, did you have any further comments? Would it be okay to move on to a different topic? Thank you for that on the carbon emissions. I was then looking at the National Fraud Initiative and you've got a graph showing many matches. I just wondered how they prioritise for review. If you have any idea of what proportion you might anticipate to be fraud based on the previous round of analysis. Yes, a very good question. Because that's one we consider ourselves every time the results are published. In fact, recently I had a catch up with members from the NFI team. A few heads of order and key contacts of the NFI system did this to discuss the results. I suppose to answer the first question in terms of prioritisation. The system itself is getting smart all the time. It has algorithms in place to help identify what they view to be the higher risk areas. That provides a bit of steer upon what we focus on. However, there is no substitute for local intelligence and knowledge that we have in our teams at the council to investigate the matches. We will also use that local intelligence to prioritise the matches as well. It is recognised, because there are a huge of false positives in there, that when we look at it the matches will recognise straight away that they are not frauds. In terms of priority, we will focus on the ones which we think have probably got the best chance of recovery or have got the biggest impact. We will probably process the ones which are lower risk at a later stage. That could include the ones which we can tell straight away a lot of false positives. We will go through the system and clear those off. Hopefully, the message there is that we focus on the ones which offer the best results for us using our own intelligence and that of the NFI system. In terms of the volume of how many could actually be frauds, I cannot give an answer on that, but I can tell you it would be a very, very small percentage of that. But there are two things to consider. One is the volume and secondly, it is also the value, the materiality. For example, in terms of creditor payments, it is not just fraud, it can be error as well. If we had made a duplicate payment, for example, it could pick that up and that would be really helpful so we could try and recover that. That could be a very, very large payment. That could have a big material impact, even though it is just one record. So, yes, it is probably not very helpful, but it is very, very difficult to anticipate what that percentage would be at this stage. Thank you, Jonathan. Perhaps in future versions of this report, you can give us an update on having started with these, what is it, 2,000 odd matches, where your team have got to and anything you have learnt as a result of that. It would be good to see that gradually coming down and anything that comes out of that. Sorry. Sorry, Councillor Redrock. Did you have further comments to make? Yes, but I think Councillor Harvey is ready to have a... I think Peter wanted to come in first, and then we will go back to you, Councillor Redrock. I was just going to comment. We have one colleague that looks at this and goes through the more. I think I will actually ask and see what sort of response I am. I guess she will know roughly the sort of figures that we have. I think she will know roughly the sort of figures that we have. I think she will know roughly the sort of figures that we have. I guess she will know roughly the sort of figures that we are looking at. I guess she will know roughly the sort of figures that we are looking at. It is an interesting point on the creditors. I think authorities do, from time to time, have a review of their purchase of ledger to check for duplicate payments. I think authorities do, from time to time, have a review of their purchase of ledger to check for duplicate payments. This has reminded me that we have not done this for a while, so it might be potentially worth doing that, but they are usually done on a no win, no fee basis, so they are trawl through and finding duplicate payments and recover them and then put the people, small percentage of them, and then put the people, small percentage of those amounts recover. It is probably worth doing that, because I do not think we have done that for at least five years. Thank you. Back to you, Councillor Redden. Thank you both very much for your answers. I just have one more question. It is about page 55 on the proactive work and the prevention. I am very sorry. It starts with quite a broad question, because I just wondered if you could help me with understanding this page just with a little bit more information about what it shows. Have we lost him? This comes from the fraud team, which is Peter's. I might have to bring Peter in to answer those questions, if that is okay, Councillor. I may have to get a bit more deep. The local authority data sharing hub, my understanding is that it relates specifically to housing fraud, and that is the way things get reported. The local authority data sharing hub relates specifically to housing fraud, and that is the way things get reported. The local authority data sharing hub relates specifically to housing fraud, and that is the way things get reported to us. If it is okay, I will provide a response on that. Thank you. I think that will be helpful. Perhaps a future version of this report. I am not sure this table is quite communicating what the team necessarily wants it to communicate to us. Maybe just thinking about how that information is presented in the future, but if you can just give an update on the data sharing hub. Thank you. I think, Councillor Harvie, you wanted to come in as well. Thank you, Chair. This is on a different front altogether. I don't know if the position is discussing a previous point, but apologies if not. I was looking at page 50 on the general area of looking at how our suppliers can be trusted or otherwise. I was thinking that, as we go forward, we are more and more going to be looking at our scope 3 emissions. It is quite topical, because some of these carbon credit operations, I don't know if you read in the paper effectively they are not abating the amount of carbon that they are claiming to when they sell those credits to airline companies and so forth. There is a whole new area of fraud there, and I wondered when a supplier makes certain claims in terms of their environmental impact, green energy use and so forth. That could turn into an awful lot of work, and I wondered probably it would make sense to do that jointly at a national level in terms of awarding suppliers to local authorities with certificates or something so that avoids every local authority having to do the same work over and over again. I just wondered, is that a thing that's on the horizon and what progress on that? Thank you councillor. It's not on our immediate short-term horizon, but I think it's a fair observation. It's something we need to be alert to. I'm happy to have a conversation with the procurement team because I think it's a good topic, so I'd be happy to take that away. Thank you. Thank you. One very quick comment from me on page 49, just coming out of this NFI work that you've done, you've noted there's some opportunities to improve, well I guess it's the sort of mapping and metadata and definitions across council data sets to make them work a bit better as stakeholders and data owners. How can the committee get assurance that this work is completed and what kind of timescales do we think it's reasonable to expect people to kind of clean up the bits of our kind of data that we own so that we can do some more of this work ourselves really in the future. OK, yeah, a good question. In terms of the NFI data sets that we are looking at, that's quite contained. So we could expect to happen quite quite soon. We would probably expect that to happen within 12 months and we'll certainly see that when it comes round to doing the next data extract. I think there is a broader topic though about other data sets in the council, which is something we could be allowed to do because there will be other data sets which won't go into the NFI system and these might be as big a priority but they may be something that we want to use in the future so I think it's helpful to be alert to that. So yes, first question we can conclude on that work and provide assurance back relatively quickly on the NFI data sets but there is a broader conversation to be had. I wonder, I mean depending on the state of your pipeline and how you're prioritising it it seems very dull and boring but a kind of data cleanliness internal audit across some of the major data sets of the council whether that actually might be in a very quiet background quite a productive thing to do and might throw up all sorts of and could potentially throw up issues that do need to come to light. So I wonder if you might consider that as part of your work in the future. Absolutely, I think there's a couple of different perspectives how we look at this. We have a different system part of our brief will be to look at the data that sits behind it because we will use it for testing. So at that point we will make definitely sort of recommendations where we can see opportunities for improvements and also we actually have a very lively information governance group within the council and we are part of that as internal audit so it's part of those regular meetings there is ongoing dialogue about improving data sets and I would say in some ways we are continually looking at this already. Thank you. Are there any further comments on this report before I close the item? I think we are good. So thank you to Jonathan Tully for his report. We have been asked to note the report and we have done so. The next item is mass of topical interest there are a few things that I would like to cover off in here but do any members have anything in the first instance? No. I wonder if you don't mind I might pop you on the spot because I think there are a few things you want to provide a verbal update on audit fees and so forth so I will hand the floor over to you for a few minutes. So the committee will be aware that we referred our 2018-19 audit fees to the PSAA the public sector audit appointments they have gone through with a fine tooth comb they have spoken to EY and spoken to me unfortunately they have only agreed a £3,500 reduction in the fee which I was slightly disappointed in I suppose it is better than nothing but I was hoping for a better than that. So that is the agreed position on the audit fee for 2018-19 and we will be referring the 19-20 audit fee to PSAA as well in the form of some time very soon hopefully. One of the other items I was going to raise we spoke about earlier which was about the change in emphasis by deluk moving away from doing current audits ahead of historical audits and now that that is swapped around I do think that puts us in a slightly stronger position than it might have done in getting our accounts up to date and it is also interesting that given that in 23-24 we will have new auditors there is an added impetus on EY to do our audits as soon as we are ready for them to do them so that they are in a position to hand over all the stuff they need to hand over to the new auditors. So I feel a little bit more positive that we might get more commitment from EY going forward and indeed they are pretty much said that to be fair to them so I think if we can work together and get a timetable to the next committee that we can both stick to I think that will be really good and hopefully will be up to date in a reasonably timely fashion. So just perhaps before you move on can you just clarify for me your comments about things kind of switching around do you mean to say that in sort of prior to now Ernst and Young were if anything under pressure to complete current audits for say other bodies that were in their current year and to sort of slightly deprioritise that the backlog that they had with us and probably with other councils is that where we were before and now it's switched around to be a bit more where we need it to be as it were. It's a difficult one because I I think it's fair to say that that was the case and certainly in discussions particularly in relation to 18, 19 there were a number of occasions where our date moved because they had to prioritise other audits and generally those audits were sort of more recent audits I don't think it's just EY probably the other audit firms were doing the same things I guess they were thinking ours is probably going to be a more difficult audit so let's I don't know it's difficult for me to comment I don't quite know what they're thinking was but quite clearly central government have picked up on this and for them to write to each authority and say they have rights audit or the audit firms they obviously were pretty clear that what they were doing so I'm hopeful that that will get us up to date perhaps a little bit sooner than they might have done otherwise so I'm quite positive about that Thank you sir some good news and some bad news in all of that does anyone in the committee want to comment on any of that before I move on? Just briefly chair thank you for the work you've done to try and know the fee because I know that takes up officer time it is disappointing that it is what it is it is nothing you know if most of us saw three and half thousand pounds appear in our bank accounts we wouldn't sniff at it so you know it's something when it comes to the external auditors and timetabling I think previously they've sort of been able to prioritise themselves and this is giving like you say an extra tool in our arsenal and I'm sure as a committee we will hold EY to account and give us a timetable and we'll help you get them to stick to it I think that's what we should say there chair but that's all I think I agree very much with that is there anything else you wanted to update us on? Just to say on the 16th of March we did go through the audit toolkit but I was acutely aware that one of two members weren't able to make that meeting so I think we thought we could perhaps have any thoughts on that? Yes, I think so this was the SIP audit toolkit which is sort of a checklist of comparing ourselves to better practice and where we're at it was a very interesting exercise I'm very grateful to Jonathan and Peter and Fazzana for their support in running that workshop but as Peter says a number of members went unfortunately able to be present and obviously I'd be interested to know what some of the kind of substitutes and perhaps other members of the council think about it as well so my suggestion would be that we share the results of that exercise in essentially a draft form with members whether that's emailing everyone an individual copy in sort of 20th century style or whether it can be put in a sort of shared document in a more shared way in a more 21st century style and I'm very grateful to Peter for his team and council hellawnig if you wanted to comment on that Yes, I mean the date that the training was on was one that clashed for many members because of the things that were organised by the council so if we could have it repeated chairs as promptly as possible I think that would be appreciated and I think we're all very keen to see the results but you may wish to to waste until you've had reflection from all the decisions and what have you so you may want to share that knowledge once you've had the opportunity to get data from more people Yes, so I suppose it's an alternative perhaps Jonathan you could perhaps you could issue members who weren't able to be present and substitute members and perhaps hear members of the cabinet or anyone else who might be interested I think if they had a copy of your slides and a short email explaining the guidance the toolkit itself is a spreadsheet that's very self-explanatory it's a series of questions and you rate each question on a scale of one to five as to how compliant you think we are with the item in question so perhaps rather than issuing the draft we could issue a blank and collect more feedback that way and compare that to how we got on in the workshop itself so one of the things highlighted by this which we didn't manage to have was this issue again of independent members of audit committees behind which there is now a certain amount of momentum from SIPFA and other regulatory bodies I am aware that work was done on this before I joined the committee and I would be hesitant obviously to repeat that unnecessarily so I wonder if perhaps this would be a good time for any previous work that was done on this to be recirculated to the current committee and we can then review that and if any members of the committee have any thoughts or comments on what they would want to see their thoughts on the principle of an independent member and if we were to have one or two or some number what they would want that member to be there to achieve because I think we don't have clarity on the purpose of it there would be very little point in the comments or thoughts that people want to submit on that I have one further thing I want to discuss but is there anything else fine so it's good practice I think for the committee to produce an annual report we sort of slightly got out of the habit of doing that in recent years so my suggestion would be that we could perhaps just spend a few minutes discussing what we would want an annual report this would go back to council what would we want that report to achieve what do we think it's important to draw attention to our wider colleagues across the council and then ultimately I think if we're happy we'll ask officers to then produce a draft and we'll agree by circulation when we're happy with it I would normally bring it back to committee meeting but our next committee meeting is not until July and then it wouldn't go into council until September and by that point in the years we'll have a view mirror and I don't particularly want to call an extra meeting of the committee just to consider a piece of internal documentation so does anybody have any thoughts on where the value of an annual report to council might lie and what they would particularly like officers to focus on council help I have no problems with an annual report being done before in the past I'm just saying they would go then to the annual council meeting I'm assuming is that correct an annual council meeting I think that would be a good opportunity for it Yes indeed but obviously we'll have to consider a kind of agenda the length of those agendas it may be that there'll be another council meeting in June or July that might also be an appropriate time for it I mean for me I'm in the past they're not exactly stimulating reads to be perfectly honest with you I hope you might think differently there's a bestseller within the council so we just say however there was one done I'm looking at John by Francis Burkett he did one didn't he that was a pretty good one that was actually so I think if we could look back to when Francis Burkett was the chairman he'd done an annual report then and that was well received by everyone it had lots of different bits and pieces in it so maybe we want to look at something like that how I suggest that you look at something like that I think it's a vulnerable suggestion to have some good one in the past to sort of draw some inspiration from that does anyone else have any comments on things that you can see? Councillor Leaming Thank you Chair I would like to see I suppose I'm just looking at our remit as Audit and Governance Committee and I think it might be quite a good opportunity to highlight some key governance points in the report as a kind of training refresher you know just not massive amounts of detail and technical information as part of you know the key policies that we've covered and sort of put it into people's noses I think it might help to sort of communicate our remit more widely amongst the council Thank you it is definitely an opportunity for us to put certain things on the map that we think perhaps you know wouldn't otherwise kind of get top billing with other members of the council Any further comments? I mean I think we're starting to build a bit of a focus on things we want to see and obviously as I say I think we can we can sign this off by by circulation in due course and you know there will be further opportunities for comments at that point Are the committee happy with that process? I think in future years we might ask for a draft probably to be brought to this march meeting but for this year I think by circulation is probably the way to go so if you're all happy with that we'll take that away Thank you that is you'll be pleased to hear everything that was on my list of questions so last thing is the date of the next meeting so we will next meet on Wednesday the 26th of July at 10 o'clock in the morning thank you all very much for attending today thank you to council Red Rock again for substituting and for officers for their reports and enjoy the rest of your day