Agenda and minutes

To receive any apologies for absence.

An apology for absence was received from Co-opted Member Roger Ong.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on the 4^th August 2025.

The minutes of the meeting held on 4 August were confirmed and signed.

Co-opted Member Simon Roach referenced pg 12 of the minutes which highlighted an action for the relevant officer to take away the responses and update the committee around payroll access to sensitive IT capabilities. 

The Head of People and Workforce Christopher Matthews responded that he would provide an update at a future meeting. 

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 the 8^th October 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.

To note the minutes of the Audit & Governance Hearing Sub-committee (if any meetings have been held).

No meetings held.

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

The Assistant Director for SWAP Internal Services, Sally White introduced the second update report for 2025-26. There were a number of ongoing concerns that were leading SWAP to offer a limited rolling opinion. SWAP was working with the Council to support the actions for the contract and expenditure compliance review and the investigation findings. Additionally, there were on-going concerns around outstanding actions. There was only 1 significant on-going corporate risk for contract expenditure compliance and follow up work had shown good progress on implementing the actions. There was another significant risk around business continuity planning. However, the action that had been delayed until the end of the year has now been implemented and as a result, SWAP believed the risk had been adequately mitigated.

SWAP was also in the process of agreeing the detailed actions resulting from the investigation work. This work had followed a different route to the usual audit work, and there was a planned meeting with a member of the Organisational Learning Group to agree a detailed action plan which would be monitored and followed up. She covered the summary report on the follow up work on contract and expenditure compliance on pg 6 of the report, which was looking positive with only 5 of 16 actions left to implement. Work had already started following up those remaining actions that would be due at the end of September. During the last Audit and Governance Committee it was decided that the Committee would invite officers to attend to talk about long overdue actions within their service area. In consultation with the Chair, specific officers had been identified to the meeting this evening to talk to members directly. However, since publication of the report SWAP had managed to close some actions owned by officers who were invited to attend.

Cllr Flower raised concerns about outstanding actions that had been outstanding for a long period of time. He commented that actions needed to be completed in a timely manner, so that the matters could be dealt with and improve the outcomes of the Council.

Cllr Todd commented that he was in favour of reviewing action lists and officers coming back to the Committee on a regular basis to report on what actions had been taken as a result. He explained that he was looking at 2 entries that had been revised 3 or 4 times, with completion times 788 days and 650 days. He asked if there was a difference here between business-as-usual actions and initiative actions and if these should be dealt with in a different format.

The Head of Service Birth to Settled Adulthood Louise Ryan gave an update on the two outstanding actions for direct payments within the Birth to Settled Adulthood Team.  The direct payment policy date was originally 30^th April 2025, and she confirmed that the service had been working on that, and it was in progress. A draft policy was due to be presented at the internal quality assurance meeting for 10^{th  ...  view the full minutes text for item 150.}

To receive a report by Sean Cremer, Corporate Director Finance and Commercial.

Cllr Clifford, Cabinet Member for Finance introduced the report. The report went through Cabinet on the 9^th September 2025 and in summary there was a forecast of £7.7 million overspend at this time of year. The overspend was largely coming from social care and the biggest element was from children’s social care. Adults were just under £1 million and children’s just over £4 million. These were due to the number of extra people coming through and the costs of care were also changing. There had been a slight dip in the cost of care but in children drastically different. At a briefing last week, he was told that care was costing 20% more per week per child. He made the Committee aware that due to departures and holidays there were no senior representatives of finance able to attend the meeting which contributed to a higher than usual level of questions that could not be answered. Any unanswered questions would be answered after the meeting or during the next Committee meeting.      

Cllr Steve Mercer informed that for this report he would like to see a greater analysis of our reserves so that he knows what head room to meet future deficits. In the transformation group, he knew of changes that had been made there that were not costed and when asked what the likely cost of those would be. The answer was that they did not know, and he would like to have an understanding of what the reserves looked like, what the committed reserves are and what the free reserves are. So that the Council knows what level of reserves that could be used to balance the books at the end of the year. He would like a deeper dive into the numbers, where directorates were not meeting their numbers.

Cllr Clifford responded that if the £7.7 million overspend was not mitigated it would have to come from reserves. There was mitigation in place and contingencies that are held specifically for overspend and the risk of overspend.  He was comfortable that the level of contingencies and the overspend forecasted, mitigated each other.

The Executive Director for Place, Jan Britton responded that previously in senior leadership team management meetings budget was part of the overall agenda and there would be a slot for budget management which would range across a number of other issues. The Chief Executive has asked him to take up the Chair of a new regular monthly budget meeting with SLT and examines the budget and looking at the Councils whole budget rather than departmental blocks. So, there was a forum to discuss pressures in the budget to mitigate those pressures and a place to address the question raised.  

Noted.

To receive a report by Chris Swain, Risk Management and Reporting Officer and Liz Crocker, Head of Strategy.

The Risk Reporting Officer, Chris Swain and Head of Service Strategy, Liz Crocker introduced the report. Dorset Council’s risk appetite statement had been approved by delegated authority by the Leader of the Council and would be published in the forthcoming risk management framework. This marked the next phase of embedding the statement into the organisation’s operations ensuring a consistent and an aligned approach to risk taking. Since the report’s publication, the service had made significant progress on the enhanced risk dashboard and adopted a phased launch approach starting in Legal and Democratic Services. All Directorates would be fully migrated by mid-November to the new risk dashboard. Followed by wider communications across the organisation. The dashboard would deliver clear benefits in terms of capturing, updating and consuming risk information. The review of Place strategic risks following the SWAP audit. The new risk management framework for Dorset Council consolidates separate elements for risk management procedures and protocols, many shaped by the Committee to one central standard.

The Committee accepted the invitation to receive a briefing and demonstration of the enhanced risk dashboard outside of the formal committee meeting, in order to support understanding and familiarisation with the new system.

Noted.

To receive a report by Julie Masci, Key Audit Partner Grant Thornton.

The Engagement Leader from Grant Thornton, Julie Masci introduced the progress report providing an update on both financial statement audits for the Council and the pension fund. There had been good progress with both audits over the last couple of months and good cooperation from officers in response to the audit enquiries. She referenced pg 145 of the report and Grant Thornton was looking to present Audit findings reports for both audits back to this Committee in November which was subject to any further residual work required in response to the outcomes of the recent health and safety investigation findings. She corrected that the report references the building control team within the Council but should instead be the building health and safety team which was a different team. Any reference to building control was in reference to building health and safety. Grant Thornton’s value for money report had now been concluded, and a draft had been issued to officers for their review, comments and management responses. The Value for Money Report would come back to Committee in November. For the financial statements, all the key testing for audit work was progressing well, and there would need to be specific work in response to the investigation. As when fraud or suspected fraud was identified across any audit, there are enhanced risk management procedures required to follow in response to that. Most importantly, Grant Thornton was attempting to identify the scope that given the issues identified in terms of controls and the weaknesses identified in those controls, whether there was any further risk of control override. There would be targeted completeness work to obtain additional assurance around the completeness of matters identified by SWAP’s review. There would also be an update at the next Committee in the Audit Findings Report. The final audit opinion would not be issued till such time as the police investigatory work has been completed, as it was possible that further matters may arise on the back of the ongoing investigation and therefore, advised to keep the audit investigation open until police work has concluded.

Cllr Suttle asked if the police do not come back by the end of February, would you add a specific paragraph to the accounts?

Julie Masci responded that there were specific circumstances that Grant Thornton was able to go beyond the statutory backstop update, under the legislation where auditors sought to exercise any additional audit powers. Depending on where things went with the investigation, this would be discussed with officers and Grant Thornton would seek to make further enquiries around where the current situation was with the police to allow them to assess what impact that would have on Grant Thornton’s opinion.

The Director Legal and Democratic, Jonathan Mair commented that the Police investigation was not a referral that Dorset Council made to the police and the police investigation was not an investigation of fraud within the Council. The police came to us because they were already investigating a supplier and a temporary  ...  view the full minutes text for item 153.

To receive an update on Our Future Council Work from Lisa Cotton, Corporate Director Transformation Customer and Cultural Services.

The Corporate Director for Transformation, Customer and Cultural Services, Lisa Cotton gave a verbal update on the regular period progress of Our Future Council Transformation. The design and delivery of our future operating model was actively being improved, which includes our customer business hubs and the delivery of our transformation office and close to concluding and extensive consultation and engagement which had taken place with all of the Council’s employees, impacted by our future operating model. Ensuring the design was shaped by those closest to the delivery and align to the Council’s organisational priorities. It had been very important that the service had been learning and listening from the feedback from the Council’s workforce throughout this process. The investment required would include our digital customer contact solution, our enterprise resource solution (extensive human resources and finance systems) and the skills and capacity required to deliver change, to all of those technologies across the organisation. Enabling the support required to work in a more accessible and efficient way, with modern and up to date technologies. The current forecast of savings at this period was at £6.7 million for this year and would be continuously updated.

Cllr Parry commented that there was a big reliance on new technologies and there have been some very high-profile cyber-attacks affecting organisations not just financially but in terms of operations. He asked for the Council’s cyber security and business continuity plans are robust. So, that if there was a glitch in the new technologies or a cyber-attack occurs then there can be some form of business as usual.

Lisa Cotton responded that cyber was one of the high risks in the organisation and the Council had invested more in cyber work and when our future structures are reviewed, there was ongoing commitment to make sure that support was in place and the right skills in the organisation and always in continual review.

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.