Issue - meetings

To consider the Draft Annual Governance Statement 2018-19.

The Audit Manager introduced the Draft Annual Governance Statement 2018-19 and advised that it was a live draft document subject to changes, and looks back over the year 2018-19.  The final document would be submitted with the final accounts in July as well as being sent to the external auditors.

Councillor Dean drew the committee’s attention to a number of points which referred to the role of the committee being a robust challenge to the Cabinet (3.9), changing the wording in 3.10 to reflect the role of the committee in the same manner in which the Scrutiny Committee was referred to in point 3.9.  He referred to key recommendations made by the last committee in establishing a Memorandum of Understanding between the executive and scrutiny (3.19) and requested that sight was not lost of the recommendations of a review into the council’s scrutiny practices by the Centre for Public Scrutiny..

Councillor Dean also referred to the Implementation of Recommendations from the Ombudsman (p12) in relation to complaints, citing that there had been a number of Freedom of Information Act requests which had got lost, and that there must now be a robust method of tracking.

The Assistant Director of Corporate Services advised that an authority has to have a scrutiny committee in place where they are running a cabinet system, which is stipulated in the Local Government Act.  This committee was not designated a scrutiny committee in terms of the constitution.  The Memorandum of Understanding was going as part of a report to the first meeting of the Scrutiny Committee.

Councillor Sell spoke about the size of the Cabinet that had been appointed in relation to other authorities and that he shared the aspiration to move to a committee system. 

Councillor Sell said that he was concerned that when this Committee met again in a year’s time to look at the Audit Manager’s statement, it could be unequivocally said that the committee had good governance.

Councillor Sell said that he specifically wanted to bring to the attention of the Committee that Uttlesford had gone up to the maximum sized cabinet, that the Special Responsibility Allowance payments had been changed and that there was a lack of transparency about this course of action by the administration.  He said that he didn’t know what the SRAs were going to be, and that was a point that should have been referred to the Independent Remuneration Panel.

The Chair put the recommendation to the committee that the Members approve the draft Annual Governance Statement.

The Committee voted in favour unanimously.

RESOLVED that the draft Annual Governance Statements was approved.