Agenda item

Report of the Strategic Director, Corporate Resources

The Committee received an update on developments in Corporate Risk Management during the period 1 October to 31 December 2017 in compliance with the requirements of good corporate governance.

The Action Plan for the delivery of the Developmental Objectives for 2017/18 incorporating progress to date shows work is progressing as per the plan and further details about the specific areas are covered below.

The draft Strategic Risk Register was presented to the Corporate Management Team to ensure all risks and controls have been included and are accurate and up to date. It was agreed that all risks had been identified and included within the draft register, however, a review of some of the controls was requested to ensure it focused on the control not the output. 

The draft Council pledges are currently subject to public consultation. It was agreed that, where appropriate, these should be referenced within the Strategic Risk Register.

The amendments have subsequently been made to the Strategic Risk Register and the revised register will be presented to the Corporate Management Team for comment once the outcome of the public consultation on the Council’s pledges has been received to ensure any changes to the pledges, resulting from the consultation have been included.

Once the outcome of the public consultation is know the revised draft will be taken to Corporate Management Team for comment and then will be presented to the Audit and Standards Committee for comment and recommendation to Cabinet.

A new crime has been introduced in the Criminal Finance Act 2017, the failure to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion, which took effect from 30 September 2017.

The Act is likely to impact primarily on higher risk organisations such as those in the finance industry but the Corporate Risk Management team are co-ordinating a risk assessment of all Council services to ensure procedures are in places and have been affectively communicated for any areas where this type of crime could be attempted.

A standard risk assessment template has been developed by the Corporate Risk Management Team for completion by Services. The templates gather information on the potential risk and the mitigating controls currently in place.

Once completed the templates will be collated and reviewed by the Corporate Risk Management Team to ensure the controls in place are satisfactory. Where additional controls are required, the implementation process will be monitored and progress reported to the Risk and Resilience Group.

The Risk and Resilience Group met 24 January and the following items were discussed:

·      Risk Management and Business Continuity Plans:

o  Update on the changes to the draft Strategic Risk Register

o  Annual review of operational risk registers

o  Annual review of business continuity plans

o  Update on changes to the draft Strategic Risk Register

o  Completion of templates relating to the Criminal Finance Act 2017

·      Resilience and Emergency Planning:

o  Gateshead modern slavery, trafficking and exploitation – concept of operations

o  Local Resilience Forum – training and exercise programme review of the previous 12 months

o  Exercise Border Reivers

o  Refresh of the Strategic Resilience and Emergency Planning Framework

RESOLVED –           That the information be noted.