Agenda item

The Committee considered a report on the Council's Annual Governance Statement (AGS) for 2021-22, as required by the Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015. The Statement was underpinned by:

·       the Annual Opinion Report (April 2021 to March 2022) prepared by KPMG, who were the Council’s outsourced internal audit managers, which was considered by the Committee at its meeting held on 24 March 2022; and

·       a self-assessment of the Council’s compliance with the CIPFA financial management code which had been undertaken and reported at Appendix 2 to the report submitted to the Committee.

The draft AGS would be included in the Council’s statement of accounts for 2021-22.The AGS acknowledged the ongoing significant challenges (both financial and organisational)placed on the Council due to the Covid 19 pandemic, and the major organisational transformation (Future Guildford) which was completed in August 2021.  It recognised the need to return to the good governance practices and processes that the Councilnormally prided itself upon.  The significant governance issues identified during theyear, werereported in Appendix1 section 6.

Where areas for further improvement had been identified, the necessary    actionwould be taken to implementchanges thatwould further develop and strengthen the Council’s governance framework.

At its meeting on 21 July 2022, the Executive had been invited to comment on the AGS and make any recommendations, as appropriate, to thisCommittee.  The Executive had commended the AGS for adoption by the Committee.  

The Committee noted a number of minor corrections and updates to the draft AGS and the self-assessment, details of which were set out on the Supplementary Information Sheet circulated prior to the meeting.

During the debate, the following points were raised/clarifications made:

·       In relation to Progress on Governance Issues reported in the 2020-21 AGS and specifically the 13 follow-up reviews of audits which received partial assurance in 2020-21, which had not yet been fully implemented, the Director of Resources indicated that an update on these would be available at the next meeting of the Committee.

·       The issue referenced in the 2020-21 AGS relating to the provision of a clear schedule of KPIs to be reported, including the need to improve the collection and quality of data and systems used to calculate some KPIs, was highlighted in the previous item (Internal Audit Progress Report).

·       It was suggested that the table in section 3 of the AGS should include, as achievements by the Council, a uniform Code of Conduct for borough and parish councillors, and training for parish councillors notably on GDPR.

·       The proposal to report benchmarking information to this committee as part of the annual Value for Money report was welcomed.

Having considered the report, the Committee

RESOLVED:

(1)   That, subject to the deletion of the seventh bullet point in the table on page 40 of the agenda, the Committeeadopts the Council’s Annual Governance Statement for 2021-22, as set out inAppendix 1 to the report, and publishes the Annual Governance Statement alongside  theadopted statement ofaccounts for2021-22.

(2)   That, subject to the corrections and updates referred to in the Supplementary Information Sheet, the Committee approves the self-assessment of the Council’s compliance with the CIPFA financial management code reported at Appendix 2.

Reason:

To comply with the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, the Council must prepare, approve, and publish an Annual Governance Statement.