Issue - meetings

To receive and consider the report of the Director of Change and Delivery.

Caroline Winstanley, Transformation Co-ordinator presented the report of the Director of Change and Delivery which provided Members with an updated Strategic Risk Register, setting out the strategic risks to the council, control measures and actions planned to help manage risk.

The annual update of the risk register included updates identified by the Shared Senior Management team through interim reviews conducted throughout the year.

Many of the highest scoring risks focused on delivering Council priorities, including service delivery, large scale capital projects, and working with strategic partners to deliver outcomes. These reflected the key challenges facing the organisation such as the budgetary pressures and financial uncertainty. ICT and cyber security also remained a high risk to the council due to the potential impact on service delivery and reputational damage which was being managed through the delivery of the ICT plan.

There were strong control measures in place to mitigate these risks, including as part of the Council’s governance framework and budget setting and monitoring processes.

The Committee noted that there were 17 risks included on the strategic risk register. Since the previous review, 1 risk had decreased (failure of shared services arrangements) and 1 risk had increased in score (incidents affecting service delivery), 1 risk had been removed (failure to manage the recovery from COVID-19 effectively) and 1 new risk had been identified (failure to address the impact of climate change).

Members queried the removal of the failure to manage recovery from COVID-19 effectively risk and were advised that the risk relating to service delivery and business continuity captures the impact of pandemics and other significant incidents.

Members also queried whether lessons learned were taken into account when reviewing the risk register and were advised that if specific incidents had occurred, such as Covid-19, there would be specific reviews but this was not undertaken as part of the review of strategic risk register.

Resolved – That members noted the strategic risks, controls in place and actions planned to further mitigate risks as set out in the report.