Agenda item

The Insurance and Risk Business Advisor briefly introduced the report. He said that the content of the report had now been standardised following the previous changes to formatting.

Councillor Stowe asked about the viability of attaining insurance to cover the Council’s major projects and said that the rising costs of materials and labour were a risk.

The Insurance and Risk Business Advisor said that for some projects there were some specific legal risks, which could not be disclosed in an open meeting. He said that Officers were working to mitigate against these risks. There was also cover for project delay, some unexpected costs as well as planning and drainage problems. However, less policies were now available and the cost was high due to due to Brexit and COVID-19.

Councillor Townsend asked about the £2.9m government support received so far and whether any further funds were expected.

The Head of Strategic Finance and Property said the government had committed to the income support scheme for transactional income for quarter one, but the amount to be claimed was still being assessed. Government were also asking retrospective questions regarding controls and assurance on grant schemes. There was a further £1m in Additional Restrictions Grant which would be distributed to businesses in the district.

The Chairman asked about the risk of performance, resilience and security of IT systems. He suggested that the likelihood should be higher and asked that the Committee’s concern about this be minuted.

The Insurance and Risk Business Advisor said that the Committee’s comments on this in the past had been considered. The Deputy Chief Executive had reviewed this and the likelihood score had remained the same; the risk had been considered to ‘probably occur’ annually, rather than ‘expected to occur or occurs regularly’ monthly as per the likelihood scoring matrix in the report.

The Head of Strategic Finance and Property said that the Shared Internal Audit Service (SIAS) were currently conducting an audit on cyber security, which would be presented to the Committee in due course. It was agreed that the Committee would await the conclusion of this audit before exploring this point further.

The Insurance and Risk Business Advisor said that the Committee may wish to consider recommending to the Executive that it receives the Risk Register as an appendix to financial reports, as had previously been the case. The Committee agreed there was merit in this proposal.

The Chairman said that he thought it unnecessary that the Committee receive both a clean and tracked changes version of the register, unless there was a significant amount of change, and a tracked changes version only would be sufficient. This was agreed.

It was moved by Councillor Fernando and seconded by Councillor Huggins that the recommendations, as detailed, be approved. After being put to the meeting and a vote taken, the motion was declared CARRIED.

RESOLVED – that (A) the report be received and considered; and

(B) the Committee recommend to the Executive that it receive the quarterly Strategic Risk Register as an appendix to financial reports.