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Issue - meetings

Annual Governance Statement Action Plan for 2025/26 Update

 

 

Meeting: 19/03/2026 - Audit and Governance Committee (Item 119)

119 Annual Governance Statement Action Plan for 2025/26 Update pdf icon PDF 67 KB

Purpose:

This report presents the Audit & Governance Committee with an update for the Annual Governance Action plan for 2025/26.

 

Recommendation:

That the Audit and Governance Committee resolves to:

1.    Note the progress update for the Annual Governance Statement Action Plan 2025/26.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Cheryl Sloan, Assistant Director, Workforce Strategy & Transformation, presented the item the purpose of which was to presents the Audit & Governance Committee with an update for the Annual Governance Action plan for 2025/26.

 

In the presentation the, Assistant Director, Workforce Strategy & Transformation made the following points:

 

  • The report presented the end of year progress against the Annual Governance Statement Action Plan.
  • The Action Plan had come from the Annual Governance Statement and detailed the improvements made to the Councils governance arrangements over the year.
  • The section marked in grey in the documents showed the actions that had been completed on the plan. The majority of actions had been completed.
  • Business Continuity Plans remained incomplete. Therefore, these would be carried over to the 2026/27 plan. Good progress had been made in this area, and the team were working on business impact assessment tool which would feed into a business continuity plan and tested in the coming year.
  • Financial Management Procedures actions would now be closed after the Audit and Governance Committee had approved this item at this meeting
  • The Annual Governance Statement would be brought back to the Committee in June 2026 along with a new Action Plan.

 

In the discussion the following points were raised:

 

  • Members queried if the Business Continuity Plan had taken account of LGR. Officers confirmed that the impact of LGR was not built into the Business Continuity Plan.
  • The degree to which policies development and implementation was a rolling process at the Council. Officers advised that a suite of HR policies had needed to be developed following the decision to bring staff back to the Council from Publica. The Performance and Appointments Committee were meeting the following week to approve several more policies and the Chief Executive would also be approving new policies under delegated authority in the coming weeks. It was felt important to update policies to ensure that they were fit for purpose in view of LGR. Each policy had been given an “owner” and review date so that they would be continually assessed. It was hoped that by the end of the financial year all policies that were required would be in place and up to date. Finally, officers advised that there would always be new policies created which often came out of identified need through Internal Audit.

 

Councillor Carl Rylett, Chair of the Audit and Governance Committee, proposed the recommendations of the report. This proposal was seconded by Councillor David Melvin.

 

The Audit and Governance Committee resolved to:

1.    Note the progress update for the Annual Governance Statement Action Plan 2025/26.

 

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