Agenda item

5.1

The Committee received questions from a member of the public, prior to the meeting.

5.2

Ruth Hubbard

1. What input, if any, has this committee had into the preparation of the Annual Governance Statement?

The Chair (Councillor Fran Belbin) explained that each committees remit is specifically defined by the Council’s constitution.  The Annual Governance Statement was part of the Council’s statutory audit regime so the responsibility for approving it quite properly sits with its Audit and Standards Committee.

2.  What general and specific issues arising from Lowcock has the committee identified (or had referred to it) that it needs to take forward as part of its work.  I’m quite surprised to see no Report about this for the Cttee and its work given the stated commitment to learning the lessons and the essential governance narrative of Lowcock (despite the weakness of the recommendations in this respect).

The Chair stated that as agreed at their meeting on 19 June 2023, primary responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the actions agreed in response to the Lowcock report sits with the Strategy and Resources Committee.  As that paper sets out: “the Council also has commitments from the LGA peer challenge report, Committee system review and other reports to monitor. Monitoring arrangements will look at these alongside the Inquiry recommendations to ensure actions focused on similar themes are considered together. To do this, progress will be monitored by the [Council’s internal] Performance and Delivery Board and Claire Taylor, Chief Operating Officer. Further accountability will be ensured through monitoring by the Council’s internal audit function. As included in the EGM motion on 10 May, ‘Strategy and Resources Policy Committee; Audit and Standards Committee, Governance Committee and other committees as appropriate will be used as vehicles to drive this process in an open and transparent way’. Strategy and Resources Committee will receive a report against progress on these actions, and those for other recent reports, during winter 2023 and summer 2024.”

As part of this process, it may be appropriate for specific issues to be considered by the Governance Committee during the course of the year.  The committee’s work programme is an evolving document and can be altered or added to during the course of the year, as required.

3.  I've mentioned this before but i'd like to make sure it's placed on public record that the Governance Review entirely ignored the resolution by full council that the Review should focus on assessing its working against the governance principles (such as they are).  No one seems concerned by this at all.  There was some very early work done on this in June '22 but that then came to a hard stop.  The failure of the Review in this respect (as well as in other respects such as any meaningful public engagement) means that the committee has continued on a path where its focus is insular and technical (and I assume also plays to some party political purposes).  The limited focus of the work so far was acknowledged recently in the Report at Strategy & Resources Policy Committee.  There are lots of implications to this avoidance of discussion, focus and operationalisation (in the constitution) of anything that might be meaningful.  There is a large gap between stated governance principles and their embedding and demonstration in the constitution.  This is your regular reminder that the reason governance changed has come about is solely because of the sustained work of citizens and communities. But it also means the council is also way out of step with CiPFA/SOLACE framework and approach, which does have statutory force. Again, no one seems particularly bothered. 

In respect of this meeting...

a) the necessarily very limited Governance Review implementation Plan is unlinked to any clear aims, objectives and outcomes (nor any way of measuring these).  In this respect it's not really an action plan, just activity.

b) I'm slightly alarmed that in the workplan it appears draft performance measures are to be brought forward for August's meeting.  However, as none of the groundwork for this has been done - the committee has spent two years making a technical change but avoiding (and I think refusing) any discussion of meaning in its work and what you are trying to do (including in relation to principles) that I fail to see how this timescale is in any way workable given that developing meaningful performance measures requires a huge amount of thinking about focus, purpose and objectives.

Would the committee like to comment? 

The Chair explained that the aim of the Six Month Review of Governance was to undertake an ‘early look’ at how the committee system is working, picking up and addressing issues before they become more entrenched. It was not meant to be a wholesale assessment of the system but sought to draw on initial experiences and learn from good practice. The Governance Review Implementation Plan (GRIP) sets out some of the improvements we need to make. It isn’t strategic and is activity-based but will help to deliver the issues identified in the Six Month Review.

The draft performance measures item is scheduled for next formal meeting so that Governance Committee Members can have an initial conversation about the task and hopefully, to kick off the work.  This is more about managing Member and officer capacity over the year alongside the other items in the workplan as we have a busy agenda and can’t do it all at once. We have not pre-formed ideas about how we develop the performance measures for the Committee System but will undoubtedly want to use the Design Principles and others such as the CIPFA/SOLACE framework as the foundations. We’ll also want to apply those principles in how we develop the performance measures and would welcome ideas from stakeholders and independent expertise and also considering how to connect this to a wider performance framework. The Chair mentioned she was personally committed to much greater public engagement.

4. Where is the Involve final Report? Those stakeholders who contributed were promised a look at the final draft and opportunity to comment, in Jan 2021 initially.  I and others have pursued this since then.  The last time I asked about it was in October 2022 and at that point we were promised the report within two weeks as was the Committee as I recall. I’m at a loss about what to ask about this anymore - the passing of time would seem to make it less and less relevant but this was tens of thousands of public money, the freely given time of stakeholders who were promised sight of the final draft 18months ago ......

The Chair recognised previously that the Committee did not really have capacity last year to make the most of the opportunity to work with Involve and we are very conscious in trying to make full use of the expertise they have in driving improvement in how we better involve the people of Sheffield in the issues that matter to them and the decisions that the Council makes.  It was a key part of what Members want the Council to achieve in the year ahead, is part of the Governance Committee’s workplan, and we have now restarted the work with Involve which will include publishing the full report with direct recommendations to the Council.

Ruth Hubbard had asked if a courtesy letter could be sent to those stakeholders.

The Chair was happy for a courtesy letter to be sent.