Issue - meetings

(AG104)

The Strategic Director and Monitoring Officer introduced the report and emphasised the significant amount of work involved in its preparation and the large amount of information included.  This would be reviewed with an aim to reduce its size whilst still ensuring members’ received all the monitoring information required.  She also highlighted that a total of 20 Code of Conduct complaints had been closed since the last update and there were now only two complaints active, both received recently.

The Strategic Director, the Corporate Head of Finance and Antony Harvey from the Southern Internal Audit Practice (SIAP) responded to questions from members on the following:

a)    The reason for the reduction in internal audit opinions over time.

b)    The anticipated timing of the working in partnership outstanding audit.

c)    The approach being taken to dealing with complaints, which included dealing with informally where appropriate.

d)    The sanctions currently available under the complaints regime.

e)    The terminology used in the Corporate Risk Register and in particular, whether all the actions listed in the current control column had taken place.  The Corporate Head of Finance agreed to take this point back to the council’s executive leadership board (ELB) for further consideration.

f)      The Strategic Director provided an update on action taken and proposed in relation to the standards investigation involving Denmead Parish Council.  She acknowledged the significant time and cost involved to the city council in dealing with such complaints.  The Committee requested that the length of time spent by officers and the cost be recorded for future complaints.

RESOLVED:

That the content of the report, the progress against the internal audit management actions and the action requested to be taken by officers outlined above be noted.