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Agenda item
Operational Risk Register
Minutes:
The Director of Corporate Services and Governance introduced her report on the Operational Risk Register to inform Members of the current Operational Risks identified for Hastings Borough Council and the measures put in place to mitigate those risks.
The report informed the committee of the changes during the year and listed the highest level risks to individual services.
Appended to the report was the Operational Risk Register.
The Director of Corporate Services and Governance commented on staffing capacity. She assured the committee that the new Leader of the Council and the Management Team and were working together and looking at ways of smarter working and making processes quicker. She advised that there has to be a good work life balance and members need to recognise that we are having to work strategically.
Councillor Westley sought reassurance on staff capacity in respect of the reduction in staffing numbers and loss of experienced and senior staff. She asked what was being done to mitigate staff when lost. The Director of Corporate Services and Governance advised that it is important to capture information when people leave, plus having a project approach and defined responsibilities so someone can cover.
The Assistant Director – Financial Services and Revenues, added that there are times when the limits to capacity are reached, for example, legal claims or appeals can be time consuming and given that the resources are scarce, other things suffer if officers are tied up. He said it will take someone else, brought in to assist, a lot longer to get up to speed.
Councillor Beaver asked if the loss of monies from parking services (from ESSL over 8 years ago) will ever be recovered. The Assistant Director – Financial Services and Revenues, said the money would not be recovered however, the Chief Legal Officer has been pursuing recovery of our costs.
Councillor Westley queried the business rate levy on the collection of large businesses that go into receivership and whether it would leave us in debt. The Assistant Director – Financial Services and Revenues replied that if a business goes into administration and there were no assets, there is nothing to cover this loss save for the bad debt provision raised by the Council i.e the Council allows for an element of non collection in its forecasts. He was hopeful that the economy would continue to show growth and that businesses would thrive in Hastings – thus avoiding administration. He further advised that in March 2015, 100 rating appeals had been lodged with the valuation office which will inevitably reduce the rateable value list and impact on the income the Council will receive in the future – some allowance had been made for this. He stated that the Non Domestic rates budget in 2015/16 was on track and was monitored closely, but it was not without risk given the number of appeals.
Councillor Westley asked how many appeals were lost in the last year. The Assistant Director – Financial Services and Revenues said that last year 98.5% of rates was collected in year, and this will increase to over 99.5% in respect of that year. He advised that overall it is a relatively small amount that we cannot collect.
Councillor Westley commented on O&S resources regarding fraud detection. She queried the potential operational risk referred to in the risk register under Investigations: ‘Housing Benefit Fraud or Council Tax Benefit Fraud is not rigorously investigated’ and asked officers if they were happy with the level of risk attributed to it. The Assistant Director – Financial Services and Revenues said he was not happy with the level of service, but responsibility for it had transferred to the DWP and the Chief Auditor was in communication with them. The DWP have agreed to send Hastings BC information every 6 weeks and it has been agreed to hold a meeting if necessary. The Chief Auditor said there had been some unforeseen difficulties following the transfer partly due to DWP case management systems not having been specifically set-up for Housing Benefit fraud. However, we are expecting 6-weekly information to arrive shortly and to have a meeting thereafter. The Chief Auditor pointed out that there were other measures to mitigate fraud risk through funding acquired from 3 successful bids. He also said that the introduction of Real Time Intelligence (RTI) was enabling correctness of Housing Benefit claims from their early start.
In response to members enquiries, the Chief Auditor will bring back a report on the fraud reduction and detection initiatives at the next Audit Committee meeting.
Councillor Westley suggested that where a planning decision can be legally challenged, so could Licensing as it is a legal statutory instrument and therefore has a potential risk. For example where incorrect information was given by the Police and not picked up by Licensing, this risk should be included. The Director of Corporate Services and Governance agreed it was a helpful suggestion.
Councillor Charman asked about the frequency of abusive behaviour in the Contact Centre. The Director of Corporate Services and Governance said the Police had been called 3 or 4 times within the last 6 months to deal with abusive behaviour. The trend she said was not going up. They were working to train and support staff as best as possible, but were mindful not to exacerbate the situation. The ‘digital by design’ approach will also assist.
RESOLVED– (unanimously) that the Audit Committee acknowledge the risks identified in the report and comment as appropriate.
Supporting documents:
- Operational Risk Register (22 06 15), item 5. PDF 110 KB
- Appendix A - Operational Risk Register (22 06 15), item 5. PDF 248 KB
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