Agenda and draft minutes

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Licensing Committee held on 1 November 2023 be confirmed and signed.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Licensing Committee held on 1 November 2023 be confirmed and signed.

3.1      The Acting Chief Accountant presented the report. He said that the amendments to the 2022/23 Audit of Accounts by 30 November 2023 had not been achieved as had been hoped. This was because some evidence around leases and asset information was not available. Officers now had the information which had been cleared by Grant Thornton. Officers had been agreeing all the amendments that had been put into the accounts. A cash amendment was still outstanding and would be sent to Grant Thornton for clearance, but officers were very close to closing the audit. It was hoped that the final statement would be agreed with Grant Thornton in the next few days.

3.2     The Audit Findings Report and all the addendums would be submitted to a future meeting of this Committee. They would be formally agreed by the Chair and the Acting Executive Director of Corporate Resources and the final accounts agreed with Grant Thornton.

3.3      A representative from Grant Thornton, Ms Brown addressed the Committee. She assured members that no material adjustments had come out since this Committee reviewed the audit report. They were all captured in the amendment document. She said that she had not noted anything of concern. The annual audit report was also in the agenda pack which was a more detailed report covering Grant Thornton’s value for money responsibilities. It required final management. It would be finalised with management responses but management had seen the report and agreed it in principle.

3.4      The Acting Director of Finance advised that responses to the Value for Money Report were being collated. A report would be brought back to the next meeting of this Committee which would include management responses.

3.5      A member referred to the VFM report and improvement recommendation 1. It was considered to be vague. Grant Thornton were asked whether they were aware of any organisations or strategies along he lines suggested for implementation. Ms Brown said that this was classed as a minor improvement point but accepted the member’s point regarding sharing and learning. She agreed to identify other local authorities that Lewisham may wish to contact to  identify whether there was anything further, in the way of actions, that could be taken. She agreed to share some examples with the Acting Executive Director for Corporate Resources. This could possibly be built into the management response.     

3.6      In response to a question about improvement recommendation 3, members were advised that officers were clear about what savings were required and the action needed to be put in place to achieve these savings. Reporting reflected this and it would form part of the management response that was being drafted. There had been previous discussion at Public Accounts Select Committee, and recommendations regarding the importance of sufficient sensitivity analysis. Going into next year, this was partly about moving to a forward look rather than a backward one and ensuring that there is a broader look at the risks and the potentials. In January there would be discussions  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

4.1      The Head of Assurance introduced the report.

4.2      Following discussion, the following key points were noted:

·                             In response to a question about Internal monitoring, members were advised that Executive Directors received periodic updates. The Corporate Assurance Board comprised statutory officers and the Head of Assurance who also considered these updates and provided pressure if necessary. There were genuine reasons why some actions had been delayed. Risks were not running out of control because the areas were being monitored. Reference was made to VAT 6-Jul-21 and how the action was being monitored by the Acting Chief Accountant which kept risk down until completion had taken place.

·                            Audit sector – one of the key drivers behind the delay in the accounts was difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff with the expertise to complete the task at hand within internal and external audit.

·                            A question about how Chairs of scrutiny committees could receive sight of relevant In-progress Audit Engagements was asked. Of particular interest were Children’s Social Care Assurance Mapping, Repairs Service – Disrepair and Housing Delivery Programme. The Head of Assurance agreed to investigate how this could be scheduled. He did not expect any confidential matters to be included in the reports. The Chair asked how there could be wider scrutiny throughout the Council ensuring that risk elements were considered as well. The Chair asked how she could facilitate this and asked to discuss the matter outside the meeting.

·                            The four overdue High Priority Actions within the Housing directorate on page 167 of the agenda, were open and the reason why they were in the report was discussed. The original due date for all of them was suggested by the service based on an understanding of the capabilities of the system. However the system did not reach the capabilities anticipated by officers and so other means had to be discovered to deliver the same outcomes. The Annual licence renewal was given as an example. There had been an expectation that a system report could be run that would identify all the licences due for renewal. This had not been possible and was undertaken as a manual task, but this was not a sustainable way of reducing risk because of the extra work involved in delivering the control. The implementation date was now June, and the Head of Assurance had been advised that officers were confident that by this date a sustainable approach to implementing that control would be achieved. Any progress would be reported to the next meeting of this Committee.

·                       This Internal update did not include action from Lewisham Homes. The actions listed in the report were Lewisham Council’s performance. Last year, officers had undertaken a substantial exercise, quality checking all the actions inherited by the Council to ensure that they were still delivering the improvements that officers hoped for. A similar process was being undertaken with regard to actions inherited from Lewisham Homes. The work would be ready early next year.

·                             A large part of Lewisham Homes’ Audit work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.1      The Head of Assurance presented the report.

5.2      Following discussion, the following key points were discussed:

·           There were two very high risks under housing directorate. Members were advised that the quality of the housing stock was one of the Council’s key strategic objectives so risks that would bring about the failure to meet that objective, were prominent in the risk register. It was an important issue. The Acting Executive Director for Corporate Resources explained that he had been challenged on two risks for which he was responsible; the risks for widescale financial control failure and the ability to set a balanced budget. He explained how the judgement had been made according to the scale of the issue, the horizon for it and the time available for mitigation.

·           There was discussion about producing the risk register. One of the key milestones in producing the register was presenting it back to the Executive Management Team and whether officers agreed that these were the top 20 risks of concern or whether other risks should have been included. There had been general consent from the Team and Mayor and Cabinet that this register was appropriate for Lewisham. The challenge was to keep the register current as the organisation and the environment changed.

·           In response to a question about target risk matrix, members were advised that the target should be achievable. At present, there was not a consistent time for that target; officers could look to adding this in the future. It would be useful to know what horizon they were working on in terms of the target. The specific targets were discussed with the risk owners.

·           The Acting Executive Director of Corporate Resources advised members that he had recently attended a meeting to discuss resilience for wide risks including flooding or large fires. The risk register was an internal operational register and since covid and the cost-of-living crisis, officers had inherited more support mechanisms for residents than were in core duties. He was concerned about how quickly they could revert back to core duties and hoped that this could be achieved within a 1year to 18 months.

·           In response to a question about setting a target risk, the Head of Assurance advised that this was a judgement about uncertain events. This was why there was a prompt to ensure that the register was regularly circulated to several different internal management teams, seen by a number of different officers and could be changed if necessary to ensure that it remained a register that was current. The register would also be submitted regularly to this Committee.

·           Councillor Sorba referred to the ‘high risk’ section in the report. He wished to place on record that he was appalled at the scale of underperformance of Lewisham’s housing stock and the number of residents that had been affected. The Governance failure and poor management was identified as the responsibility of a previous institution, Lewisham Homes.  He asked whether arms length organisations were more likely to be able to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

RESOLVED that under Section 100 (A) (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds that they involve the likely

 disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12 (A) of the Act, as amended by the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) (Amendments) (England) Regulations 2006 and the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighed the public interest in disclosing the information:

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RESOLVED that the report be noted.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.