Agenda and minutes

To receive any apologies for absence.

An Apology was received from Cllr Jill Haynes.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 14^th April 2025.

The minutes of the meeting held on 14^th April 2025 were confirmed and signed.

To disclose any pecuniary, other registrable or non-registrable interest as set out in the adopted Code of Conduct.  In making their decision councillors are asked to state the agenda item, the nature of the interest and any action they propose to take as part of their declaration.

If required, further advice should be sought from the Monitoring Officer in advance of the meeting.

No declarations of disclosable pecuniary interests were made at the meeting.

Representatives of town or parish councils and members of the public who live, work, or represent an organisation within the Dorset Council area are welcome to submit either 1 question or 1 statement for each meeting.  You are welcome to attend the meeting in person or via MS Teams to read out your question and to receive the response. If you submit a statement for the committee this will be circulated to all members of the committee in advance of the meeting as a supplement to the agenda and appended to the minutes for the formal record but will not be read out at the meeting. The first 8 questions and the first 8 statements received from members of the public or organisations for each meeting will be accepted on a first come first served basis in accordance with the deadline set out below.

All submissions must be emailed in full to [email protected] by 8.30 am on 28^th May 2025.

When submitting your question or statement please note that:

· You can submit 1 question or 1 statement.

· A question may include a short pre-amble to set the context.

· It must be a single question and any sub-divided questions will not be permitted.

· Each question will consist of no more than 450 words, and you will be given up to 3 minutes to present your question.

· When submitting a question please indicate who the question is for (e.g., the name of the committee or Portfolio Holder)

· Include your name, address, and contact details.  Only your name will be published but we may need your other details to contact you about your question or statement in advance of the meeting.

· Questions and statements received in line with the council’s rules for public participation will be published as a supplement to the agenda.

· All questions, statements and responses will be published in full within the minutes of the meeting. 

No public participation.

No Meetings Held.

No meetings held.

The Director of Legal and Democratic made the Committee aware that during the February Cabinet meeting, the Cabinet Member for Finance had referred to a further significant internal audit investigation report which concerned health and safety compliance and was referred to in the overall Annual Opinion Report as one of the reasons that the Head of Internal Audit would be issuing a limited assurance opinion. He explained that for legal reasons the Health and Safety Compliance Report had not featured on the agenda and must not be discussed. Members were advised not to comment on matters that would be covered by that report. The health and safety compliance report would be brought to a future meeting so that Members could be reassured that the Council had learned from the report findings. It would be necessary at that time for parts of the report to remain confidential and for members of this Committee only.

To receive a report by Angie Hooper, Principal Auditor for SWAP.

The Principal Auditor for SWAP introduced the report. The update report only concerned the findings of the contract and expenditure compliance with Council constitution and scheme of delegation audit which had been given a limited assurance and was identified as a significant risk. The audit was agreed with the Monitoring Officer following the initial findings of the investigation that SWAPs counter fraud team had been conducting and the scope was to ascertain if there were sufficient controls in place to ensure compliance with the scheme of delegation in relation to expenditure and the award of contracts for specialist professional services.

SWAP was unable to provide assurance that all expenditure had been approved in line with the Council’s constitution and scheme of delegation. Over a 2-year period 99% of work for specialist professional services or statement of works projects had been directly awarded to a supplier and it was unclear whether any form of mini competition had taken place which made it difficult to demonstrate value for money. Following the conclusion of SWAPs work, a further issue around agreement of terms and conditions alongside the overarching contract had been identified. The approval processes for statement of works projects had not been consistently followed with the required sign off by finance and commercial and procurement colleagues. Budgets for statement of works projects had increased potentially multiple times, and it was unclear whether these obtained the required approvals. SAP which is the Council’s finance system did not have functionality to place budgetary commitments which could make it difficult to accurately project spend against budgets. Actions had been agreed by officers and would be followed up and reported back to the Committee in August.

Cllr Suttle commented that there had been a significant failure of internal systems and as a committee would like to ask a number of questions that we are not able to at this time due to not having the health and safety report in front of us but would come at a later date and there would be a more frank discussion in the future. He also explained that there was no member oversight and requested that some members be added to the officer working group in order to oversee how the work was going.

The Head of Legal Services informed that since the first draft had been received from internal auditors, the Council formed a small working group of officers to start looking at the recommendations which had tight timescales. The working group of officers consisted of Head of Legal Services, Corporate Director for Finance and Commercial, Senior Contract Lawyer from the Legal Team, Head of Financial Strategy, Head of Procurement Team and a Senior Finance Officer. The Group had looked at the recommendations and findings and was starting to act on them. The first finding referred to the financial part of the scheme of delegations and a recommendation to look at aligning some of the financial thresholds in SAP. There had been a detailed piece reviewing the scheme  ...  view the full minutes text for item 105.

To receive a report by Sally White, Assistant Director for SWAP.

The Assistant Director for SWAP introduced the report. She went through the Annual Opinion Report and offered a limited assurance opinion, and this opinion was based on a report that was planned to come before the Committee but for legal reasons was not possible. In the conclusion, SWAP had taken into account the excluded report but due to legal restrictions were unable to discuss this in the context of SWAP’s limited assurance opinion. The report would be brought to the Committee at the earliest opportunity. She covered the rest of the aspects of the report, covering pg 27 the risk coverage table and pg 29 the dashboard of open management actions. The number of overdue actions and revised dates had increased slightly over the year. Pg 30 showed that the number of actions with revised dates had increased, indicating that actions were taking longer to implement than anticipated.

Noted.

To consider the work programme for the Committee.

No comments.

To consider any items of business which the Chairman has had prior notification and considers to be urgent pursuant to section 100B (4) b) of the Local Government Act 1972. The reason for the urgency shall be recorded in the minutes.

There were no urgent items.

There is no exempt business.

There was no exempt business.