Agenda item

This report provides an update on progress on the improvement areas identified in the 2022/23 Annual Governance Statement for monitoring purposes.

Witnesses:

Paul Evans, Director - Law and Governance

Nikki O’Connor, Strategic Finance Business Partner

Key points raised in the discussion:

1.    The Director - Law and Governance introduced the report and annexes which outlined the activity that had taken place and was planned, and provided assurance that those areas of high risk picked up in the Annual Governance Statement (AGS) were being undertaken. He summarised the updates on activity regarding the several issues identified:

-       DB&I programme – MySurrey: variety of panels and boards moving from an intense emergency response post go live towards business as usual by 2024.

-       Special Educational Needs (SEN): due to the level of risk in relation to the delivery of the SEN service, the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee received an update report in October.

-       Home to School Travel Assistance: the Committee received a full update report in September.

-       Subject Access Requests: the performance was picked up by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a risk and since it was identified the performance rose from 72% to 94%; last month the ICO confirmed that it would not require Surrey to provide informal monitoring information to them.

-       Planning Committee procedures: a full review was undertaken and a piece of work was reported to Council in October to improve the procedures. 

-       Adult Social Care: whilst the risk was not particularly well-defined, the reshaping of the management structure had started; work was underway with external organisations to provide assurance identifying areas for improvement.

2.    The Chairman referred to the section on health integration within the AGS on page 75 noting that he could not clearly see what the improvement was since last year and whether it required any improvement. The Director - Law and Governance noted that the AGS included a narrative about work being undertaken in a variety of areas, not all those areas were identified as significant risks needing to be focused on by the Committee. He would provide an update on health integration. He noted that officers next month would begin the process of next year’s AGS next month, a large amount of work would be underway in the spring.

3.    A Committee member noted that according to the AGS Grant Thornton was going to do some additional testing for the Council’s Pension Fund valuations and she asked for an update. The Strategic Finance Business Partner noted that related to the sign-off of the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts at item 9, there was a national issue regarding unsigned accounts where there was a release for the triennial valuation of the pension fund and that review had been undertaken.

4.    A Committee member referred to page 81 of the AGS, regarding the DB&I Programme under the remit of the Resources and Performance Select Committee which had a Task and Finish Group starting on that. The Intelligent Client Function (ICF) had been developed reporting into the Finance Directorate, he asked whether it remained the case that the piece of work would be completed by the end of December. The Strategic Finance Business Partner noted that interviews were underway for senior posts within the ICF. The Committee member noted the need to work out what officers’ understanding was of the completion of the ICF.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee confirmed that it was satisfied with the progress made so far.

Actions/further information to be provided:

1.    A38/23 - The Director - Law and Governance will provide an update on health integration and how it was improving.