Agenda item

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 November 2025. There was an associated action on training staff, a revised policy which would be completed by January 2026. There was also an associated action regarding the financial checks and reviews and reclaiming of money which was connected to some improvement work to implement an automated system rather than a manual process of recording. The Service had invested in a resource, a specific business analyst who was helping plan amendments at the moment and work was in progress. Work would be completed, with a new process to begin in February 2026.

Simon Roach commented that for these long outstanding actions it was important to understand the risk that was being carried because of delayed implementation. He asked SWAP that in the future it would be useful to remind members of the risk that was being carried.

Louise Ryan responded that for the meantime in terms of the recommendations and the actions that SWAP had given us, the Service had incorporated this into the practice of the day to day teams and was up to date with an annual review of all of our children short breaks direct payments and the team were able to review the bank accounts and complete the checks on a yearly basis and recover any money that was additional that the family would not be using. The automated process should make this process even quicker for the service and the team aimed to increase the frequency of these checks.  

The Head of People and Work Force; Christopher Matthews gave an update on one of the overdue actions in regards to consultancy and agency spend. The action had been closed, and SWAP had provided assurance that they were satisfied with the work that had been undertaken. The delay was primarily linked to the outcome being in time with Connect2Dorset, our new joint venture for agency workers and the Service had to let Connect2Dorset embed in before the team was able to access the reporting capabilities that were needed to obtain the data. There was now a comprehensive dashboard that had been pulled together and had lots of information on consultancy agency spend with regard to cost, length of placement so it can actively be used to monitor agency spend.

The Cabinet Member for Finance and Capital Strategy, Cllr Clifford commented that the £500 spending action had been updated and completed. He added that sometimes it is not just risk, it is about the importance, he reference pg 29 – the housing service would ensure temporary accommodation rents set at levels recommended by the Housing Revenue Accounts Guidance had a long date on it but had been taken out and moved into budget due to there being a rent review that was going to take place. He noted that although the report is very useful it very quickly becomes out of date, with updates coming through all the time. There needs to be a way to update the Committee with the latest position.

Noted.