Agenda item

Report of Executive Director of Corporate Services and Commercial

The Committee considered the report of the Executive Director - Corporate Resources and Commercial which provided an update on the Corporate Risk Register as detailed in Appendix A to the report.

The report indicated that the ownership of the content of the Corporate Risk Register rested with the Strategic Leadership Board.

Since the last meeting held on 4 September 2024, no new risks had been added to or removed from the Corporate Risk Register in the current quarter.

The external review of the risk management draft report had highlighted a number of recommendations to improve risk management.

There were other on-going initiatives to embed risk management within the Council including assurance mapping and horizon scanning.

Substantial work had been undertaken to attempt to embed risk management across the Council over the past six years through designing a risk framework, providing training, and facilitating the Service and Operational Risk Registers using resources across the Risk and Audit Team to facilitate improvements. Recent work had included drafting the Sefton Assurance Framework and undertaking Assurance Mapping to inform the Annual Chief Internal Auditor’s Opinion and the Annual Internal Audit Plan.

There was clear evidence of engagement by the leadership team in terms of regularly reviewing the CRR. To demonstrate that risk management was embedded at this level engagement should be universal and consistent over time as highlighted in the update. Improvements required included the consistent regular updating of SRRs, considering the outcome of the ORRs when looking at SRR and sharing the SRR with the relevant Cabinet Member and the Risk team, when requested.

There was one service where the updating of their SRR over the past 12 months had not been timely, within this quarter, a further service area had not updated their SRR, so further work was being undertaken with the services to ensure this was improved. ORRs remained an area to be improved across the Council and the Risk and Audit service were continuing to work with teams to facilitate this across the organisation.

The implementation of the Council’s risk appetite would help to further embed risk management within the Council and should improve corporate decision making. The risk management training would assist staff and members to understand the principles of risk management in a consistent manner.

There was further work planned to improve risk management within the organisation through the roll-out of Key Risk Indicators.

The initial findings from the external review of the Council’s risk management review had highlighted areas to improve and the team would set out an action plan for the next meeting to consider.

Following consideration of the report, the Committee received a presentation from the Executive Director – Regeneration, Economy and Assets. The presentation updated the Committee on Growth and Strategic Investment Programme Delivery, as follows:

·       Risk

·       Mitigations

·       Mitigations – Governance Processes and Procedures

·       Mitigations – Project Controls and Reporting

·       Programme Manual – Contents

·       Mitigations – Programme and Project Prioritisation

·       Mitigations – Central and Regional Government Engagement

·       Mitigations – Market Engagement

·       Mitigations – Lessons Learned processes

·       Continuous Improvement

Members of the Committee asked questions/commented on the following issues arising from the report and verbal update:

·       Recruiting and retaining staff

·       Apprenticeships

·       Entreupenerial opportunities

·       Working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

The Committee requested an update on the proposed action in place on apprenticeship outcomes and staffing levels i.e. recruitment and retention.

RESOLVED: That