From Councillor Potter to the Leader of Council:
In September 2015 you and the Chief Executive signed the Annual Governance Statement. How many times in the next 9 months did you discuss this matter with the Chief Executive and what were the outcomes of your discussions?
From Councillor Potter to the Chair of Overview and Scrutiny:
Do you consider that the draft minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny meeting on the 28th July 2016 do justice to the questioning of the Audit Report or the Annual Governance Statement?
From Councillor Clark to the Leader of Council:
Do you agree with the Internal Auditors comments on Contract Management Corporate Arrangements and can you, as Leader, give an explanation as to how it has got into this 'state'?
Minutes:
1. Councillor Potter submitted the following question:
To Councillor Cowling, the Leader of the Council:
“In September 2015 you and the Chief Executive signed the Annual Governance Statement. How many times in the next 9 months did you discuss this matter with the Chief Executive and what were the outcomes of your discussions?”
The Leader of the Council, Councillor Cowling replied
“The annual governance statement is signed by the Chief Executive and myself in my role as Leader, in line with the requirements of the Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting and it is a very important document in providing adequate controls within this Council. As a member of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee you will know that in its audit role the Committee has delegated responsibility to review the Council's corporate governance arrangements. An update was presented to your committee on 16 January, at which you were present I believe. In answer to your question, I do not keep a note of how often the Chief Executive and I discuss the annual governance statement. It is such an integral part of the everyday work of this Council, I doubt if we ever meet without touching on several areas that are covered by this document. I do, however, try to stick to my Member role which is policy and leave delivery to the Chief Executive."
Councillor Potter asked the following supplementary question:
“Going back to what we were doing at Scrutiny, because we were looking at this quite recently, we pay a substantial amount of money for the auditors and I hope all Members agree that this is essential to assure us of sound financial management and scrupulously accurate budgets, which you might have seen from the minutes from earlier on, that I asked last time. This annual governance statement sets out written concerns of the auditors about Council performance, including contracts that are missing, no copies of contracts, service level agreements missing, audit actions not carried out for over two years, no corporate monitoring of contracts but one specific item that I noted from Scrutiny was that regarding our payroll agreement with City of York it said last year in agreed actions bi-monthly monitoring through the Management Team to continue to 2015/16 and beyond. So could I just ask that you confirm that you have at least 6 meetings in the last year to address these issues please?"
Councillor Cowling replied that:
"I don't understand why you're asking me that. The Chief Executive and I meet far more than that, we've had far more than 6 meetings and I don't really think it's my role to be monitoring the actions in the action plan. That is for the Chief Executive and the Chief Financial Officer."
2. Councillor Potter submitted the following question:
To Councillor Keal, Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee:
“Do you consider that the draft minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny meeting on the 28th July 2016 do justice to the questioning of the Audit Report or the Annual Governance Statement?"
The Vice Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Councillor Acomb replied on Councillor Keal's behalf
"The draft minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on the 28th July 2016 have not been approved by the Committee. The draft minutes will be considered by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on 8 September 2016 . It is at the meeting on 8 September 2016 that Members of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be able to consider whether or not the draft minutes are a true and accurate record of the meeting. It is not the role of Full Council to consider the accuracy of the draft minutes of a committee before the committee has had an opportunity of approving them. Nor is it the role of Council to debate the accuracy of the minutes of a Committee after they have been approved.
The minutes of a committee meeting provide a record of decisions of the meeting.
The minutes are not a verbatim record of the committee meeting.
Anyone wishing to know what questions were put to Officers by Councillors on the Committee and the answers received may listen to the audio recording of the committee meeting which is available on the website of Ryedale District Council. The local library also have equipment to facilitate this.
Against that background the short answer to your question is that it is for the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on 8 September 2016 to decide if the draft minutes are an accurate record of decisions of the committee. They are not meant to be a record of all questions and answers."
Councillor Potter asked the following supplementary question:
“I was actually asking the Chair of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee if he considers that the draft minutes represent an accurate record of that occasion and he hasn't really given me an answer to that....... As I conducted a very lengthy question and answer session at that meeting, scrutinising the many weaknesses noted in writing from our internal auditors, do you consider that this line of questioning didn't warrant mentioning in the minutes or even in the draft minutes?"
Councillor Acomb replied:
"As far as I'm concerned the draft minutes list the decisions made, the detail as I explained is already recorded for you to look at and the Committee will discuss that on the 8th."
3. Councillor Clark submitted the following question:
To Councillor Cowling, the Leader of the Council:
“Do you agree with the Internal Auditors comments on Contract Management Corporate Arrangements and can you, as Leader, give an explanation as to how it has got into this 'state'?"
The Leader of the Council, Councillor Cowling replied
“First of all Councillor Clark I don't agree with you that we are in a 'state' as you put it. The audit found that the arrangements for managing risk are satisfactory. The whole purpose of carrying out an audit is to flush out any weaknesses and to identify where improvements can be made. This is what audit did and those improvements are being actioned.”
Councillor Clark asked the following supplementary question:
“For once I find myself in agreement with the Leader of Council - yes - audit is designed to flush out weaknesses, so not this year, not last year but the year before, so that would be 14/15 the internal auditors flushed out a weakness with the payroll arrangements. Not a proper contract monitoring, no service level agreement in a TECKAL type arrangement - my words not theirs. Last year is was brought to Councillors by the way, last year the internal auditors said, in your words Chair, flushed out that the arrangements with York had not got proper monitoring of the contract. There was no service level agreement, in other words it wasn't good enough, more flushing. This year we have a report from the internal auditors, by the way each of those last 2 years you have signed the annual governance statement to say what this Council would be doing .... and on that basis what good was the flushing out of the internal auditors if for now we're into the 3rd year when under your leadership and your signature on the annual governance statement, nothing has happened to improve the situation and we are 1 level above unacceptable in internal audit, ie it's gone down since the good old days of Cllr Wainwright's stewardship."
Councillor Cowling replied:
"I'm absolutely sure I can rely on my members of Overview and Scrutiny to make sure that the action plan is implemented."