Agenda item

Strategic Risk Update

Minutes:

Ross Jago (Head of Governance, Risk and Performance) and Councillor Shayer (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Economy) were in attendance for the Strategic Risk Update.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(a)

in terms of risk 11 ‘The Council having insufficient workforce capacity and resilience to deliver the required range of services to meet statutory obligations and administration priorities’, pay levels were not specifically excluded from the list of reasons as to why the Council was experiencing issues with recruitment and retention of staff;

 

(b)

the Council considered all methods of encouraging apprenticeships and employed apprentices across the whole range of the workforce; this was a recent scrutiny recommendation and was also key to the Council’s People Strategy;

 

(c)

in terms of risk 18 ‘Risk of financial impact of delivering proposed changes to Waste Services as set out in the Government's Draft Environment Bill’ and the possible necessity to have separate food waste collections, it was confirmed that the Council was aware of the legislation however it hadn’t yet been informed sufficiently to provide enough detail as to next steps to be taken.

 

Under this item Councillor Lowry advised Members as to his perception of the role and responsibility of both the Performance, Finance and Customer Focus Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Audit and Governance Committee in terms of the risk register. It was highlighted that the Audit and Governance Committee had overall responsibility for the strategic risk register but were sharing that risk register with scrutiny in order to see items on the risk register that were relevant to the scrutiny committee and which therefore might wish to be added to the work programme. The Audit and Governance Committee would simply point out that this risk was increasing, maintaining its level or decreasing and would ask others to do a piece of work on that subject matter.  The Chair responded that it was important that both committees worked together on important issues.

 

The Committee agreed

 

1.

to recommend to the Audit and Governance Committee that they pay particular attention to risk 11 ‘The Council having insufficient workforce capacity and resilience to deliver the required range of services to meet statutory obligations and administration priorities’, specifically the pay conditions of staff and staff retention when next discussing the strategic risk register;

 

2.

to include Plan for Homes to their work programme, with specific consideration of risk 19 ‘Risk of failing to deliver the range of housing to meet Plymouth’s need’;

 

3.

to recommend to the Growth and Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Committee that they add to their work programme risk 18 ‘Risk of financial impact of delivering proposed changes to Waste Services as set out in the Government's Draft Environment Bill’ from the Strategic Risk Register, specifically the potential impact this legislation would have on food waste disposal;

4.

to recommend to the Growth and Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Committee that they add to their work programme risk 21 ‘Viability of commercial bus operators with patronage not yet back to pre-Covid levels’ from the Strategic Risk Register, specifically the impact this would have upon Plymouth’s residents.

 

 

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