Issue - meetings

REPORT OF THE SENIOR POLICY OFFICER

To consider the Annual Governance Statement 2017/18.

RESOLVED:  That the Annual Governance Statement for 2017/18 and action plan was agreed.

REASON FOR DECISION:  It is a statutory requirement of the Council to review and approve the Annual Governance Statement and action plan.

The Senior Policy Officer presented for the approval of the Committee the report and Annual Governance Statement (AGS) for 2017/18.  Reviewing the Council’s governance arrangements for that period and proposing an action plan to update and improve those arrangements.

The final version of the draft AGS had been presented in June and this final version included the committee’s comments from that June meeting which included the following:

·                Inclusion of the actions to address the Gender Pay Gap report with the AGS action plan for 2018/19.

·                To update the Executive Member responsibility and to reflect the update in staff designation following the recent senior management.

·                In respect of an outstanding case with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).  The Information Commissioners Officer first notified the Council in November 2017 and a caseworker was assigned in April 2018.  GDRP was not in place at that time.  The Council had recently been informed that they had won that particular case.

Additional reference/update of AGS to the Head of Internal Audit Annual report that was presented at the June meeting.  This was not available at the time of writing the draft AGS.

The CIPFA SOLACE Framework had been revised and had now been loaded on to the Council’s Corporate Governance intranet page.

Updates would follow in September 2018 and March 2019 on the action plan.

The Chairman advised that it was a statutory requirement to approve the AGS and action plan.  It was agreed.

RESOLVED:  That the Annual Governance Statement for 2017/18 and action plan was agreed.

REASON FOR DECISION:  It is a statutory requirement of the Council to review and approve the Annual Governance Statement and action plan.