Agenda item

This report sets out the Annual Governance Statement that the council is required to produce annually, for inclusion in the Statement of Accounts.

The Committee received a report of the Head of Strategic Finance regarding the Annual Governance Statement, which would be included in the Statement of Accounts. 

The Head of Strategic Finance informed the Committee that the draft version had been sent to Grant Thornton and there had been one comment on the document.  It had been discussed at the Leadership meeting in May.  At the end of the report it listed the significant issues identified as a result of the review of effectiveness.

The Head of Strategic Finance explained that the delay in the completion of the recommendations from the Revenues and Benefits health check had been due to a number of reasons.  He noted that the demand for the service was still increasing and due to the nature of the work the service was highly dependent on its software. 

In response to a question about the fourth concern in the list, the Head of Strategic Finance explained the problem which had occurred during the previous Financial Year.  The Fraud Manager had been instrumental in ensuring the money was recovered.  New procedures had been put in place to ensure the problem would not happen again.

The Head of Strategic Finance advised that he would arrange for a copy of the ICT action plan to be provided to Members.

In response to a question from Councillor Brandon, the Head of Strategic Finance commented that initially there had not been sufficient resources in Revenues and Benefits.  Additional funding was put in place to resolve the problems within the service.  The Council had to make cuts in budgets but the costs for Revenues and Benefits were increasing.  He felt that the service did not make sufficient use of ICT and e-forms.  This would help balance the costs for the service, where the workload was increasing.

With regard to ICT, the Head of Strategic Finance said that financial resources were in place, for example capital funding had been available for the replacement servers.  The councils would consider whether to outsource this service.

Councillor Derbyshire advised that the Shared Services Joint Committee was concerned about the Revenues and Benefits service.  He was encouraged that recently more top managerial resources had been allocated to it.

Councillor Khan stated that he was concerned whether both councils' ICT systems were robust enough.  He felt it was vital that a proper health check was carried out and particularly in relation to hacking.  He suggested the Committee should request that an investigation was carried out to discover whether any ICT vulnerabilities existed.

The Audit Manager responded that the annual penetration test made recommendations how to improve processes.  He would ensure that issues identified during testing were reported to managers immediately.  An audit of the infrastructure was to be carried out.  He confirmed that the annual test did include access from outside the authority.  When considering any contract for the ICT service, security aspects should be built into it.

The Head of Strategic Finance stated that a report could be presented to the Committee at the next meeting.  The Committee agreed with this suggestion.

RESOLVED –

that the Annual Governance Statement as set out as Appendix A to the report be approved and that a report regarding the robustness of the Council’s ICT systems be presented to the next meeting.