Issue - meetings

Members considered a report on the strategic risks facing the Council as of January 2019; strategic risks were deemed to be those that relate to the Council’s ability to deliver the Corporate Plan objectives.

The risk scoring risk matrix at part 4 of the report and again at Appendix 1 provided an overview of the risks to the Council.  Anything rated as ‘green’ in the risk matrix would be dealt with under ‘business as usual’.

The Management Team within WLDC consisting of senior managers regularly review strategic risks, and there had been recent activity across a number of risks with further strengthened mitigations against these risks.  These would not normally be added to this report as it made the risk table long in length; however it did illustrate the amount of work that goes into mitigating risks.

The new Corporate Plan was in development; once adopted, work would commence to update the Council’s risk strategy.  Member and staff training was to be held; for Members, it would form part of the induction training, assisted by Assurance Lincolnshire.

There was a review of the format of the risk register.  The current format harked back to a previous time when further assurance was needed.  Work with one of the Independent Members would take place to design a format which provided similar levels of assurance.

The following points were highlighted by the committee and officers:

·         The Corporate Policy Manager was thanked for his work on the report;

·         It was recognised that the risks were being regularly reviewed, and now included items such as devolution;

·         The items in the risk register were changeable, partly due to the risks within the Council being maintained and looked at differently from two years ago.  Despite the changes, there were many items in the register that would be reflected next time.

RESOLVEdto:

(1)  Be assured that current controls and proposed actions were sufficiently robust;

(2)  Support and endorse the planned work in relation to risk management.