Agenda item

5.1

 The Chair (Councillor Mohammed Mahroof) stated that the Committee had received four questions from a member of the public, prior to the meeting. As these questions were submitted after the deadline the Chair agreed that the questions be noted at the meeting and that the questions and responses be included in the minutes.

5.2

Ruth Hubbard

1.  I note the report of the External Auditor at agenda item 7 in relation to the annual accounts 2921/2.  In relation to the Annual Governance Statement she says she has no further issues to report.  However the AGS for the year in question is not written in line with the CIPFA/SOLACE requirements that I understand have statutory force.  Omissions include no reference to the framework principles, and no statement of assurance in the AGS, but the whole approach taken does not really align with the requirements.  Will the committee bring this rapidly to the auditor's attention?

2.  Last meeting I asked about the review of the members Code of Conduct and what would be different this time given the significant events documented in Lowcock and the failure of the members code of conduct at the time to be invoked and applied.  Essentially the answer given was that the committee believed the same thing would not happen again under the new Code of Conduct, since adopted.  

I feel this answer is misconceived and inaccurate.  At the time of your discussions of the new Code of Conduct there was a real, live and clear bullying incident witnessed by all at a virtual full council meeting and perpetrated against a member of the public.  No action appears to have been taken by anyone at all though, after considerable effort pursuing it following the incident, the then Deputy Leader wrote to me 7 months later that it was "not the council's finest hour". This incident - that was current at the time of your discussions - does not seem to have registered as being relevant or to have informed the committee's considerations of the new code of conduct -  behaviours towards members of the public were simply unmentioned.  

Some people may feel these kinds of incidents are all in the past now (and I hope they are).  However, the failure of Audit and Standards Committee to pick up on issues through the street trees dispute, and its failure to acknowledge or pay attention to the fact of behaviours going on that we're concurrent to its consideration of the new Code of Conduct does not generate confidence for the future I.e. that inappropriate behaviours (or worse) will be swiftly picked up and dealt with. The problem seems to me not the words written in a Code of Conduct (and there was also a perfectly adequate Code of Conduct at the time of the street trees dispute too), but the reluctance or inability to apply it in practice (and perhaps in the face of other considerations regarded as more important).  So I ask again, what will be different this time, in reviewing the Code of Conduct?  Will this committee discuss the failure of its Code to be effective in practice in the past, and identify what needs to happen in the future to ensure that it is applied routinely, and is also seen to be so?  

3.  I have received no answer to my question from the July meeting about the numbers of outstanding complaints relating to the street trees dispute (at that July date).  The guidance is that answers are normally provided within ten days (and I did not think this was a difficult or complex question to warrant such delay).  

4.  I note the review of the 2022/23 Annual Governance Statement in the committee's workplan (and that I raised last meeting for being approximately 90% of the exact same words from the previous years AGS, and for being almost entirely unaligned with the requirements of CIPFA/SOLACE framework).  Given I think the AGS will essentially need to be rewritten almost in its entirety, and that it forms part of the annual accounts, will the committee reopen the statutory public inspection window once the AGS is re-done?