Issue - meetings

The Committee is asked to consider and note the significant strategic risks and issues highlighted in this report to ensure the continued wider reporting of the Corporate Risk Register and Risk Action Plan.

The Committee considered a report from the Internal Audit Manager that sought to advise the Committee of the significant strategic risks and issues and how they were identified, managed, monitored, and reported. The Internal Audit Manager highlighted that five new proposed actions were included in the Risk Action Plan. The Committee’s attention was also drawn to one risk which had moved from amber to red as part of the review which related to Climate Change and Sustainability. This was due to increased extreme weather events and their impact.

The Committee raised technical queries related to mitigations the Council was putting in place to address the impact of groundwater flooding, and how the re-registration in housing affected the decrease in numbers. The Committee also noted risk description related to delays on the Council’s development schemes and requested modelling that demonstrated the developments would have delivered the yields identified if they were not delayed. Officers confirmed that answers would be provided after the meeting.

The Committee resolved to consider the significant strategic risks and issues highlighted in the report, ensuring continued wider reporting of the Corporate Risk Register and Risk Action Plan across other Committees.

To consider the significant strategic risks and issues highlighted in this report and present these to the Corporate Policy and Resources Committee, ensuring continued wider reporting of the Corporate Risk Register and Risk Action Plan across other Committees.

The Committee received a report from the Audit Manager on the significant strategic risks to the Council in delivering its priorities and highlighted five new actions across four risk categories.

The Committee discussed the impact of externalities on the various risk categories and queried the risk areas which related to recovery from Covid. The Audit Manager advised that the Risk Register reflected the corporate priorities and that the corporate plan was in the process of being updated, once that work had been completed the risk areas would change to reflect the new corporate priorities.

The Committee requested clarification on the number of Ukrainian families that had approached the Council for housing. The Deputy Chief Executive advised that the specific number would be identified and communicated to the members outside of the meeting.

The Committee expressed concern that the Corporate Risk Register was too long and that some risk owners may not understand the difference between a ‘control’ and a ‘mitigation’. The Audit Manager suggested that the creation of service-level Operational Risk Registers would help to reduce the size of the Strategic Risk Register. 

The Committee requested that the concerns over the size of the Risk Register were communicated to the Corporate Policy and Resources Committee.

The Committee resolved to consider the significant strategic risks and issues highlighted in the report and present these to the Corporate Policy and Resources Committee, ensuring continued wider reporting of the Corporate Risk register and Risk Action plan across other Committees.