Mr Will Tuckley, Chief Executive introduced the report stating plans had been drawn up in response to the Independent Review of the 2018/19 year-end closure of accounts. Mr Tuckley said it was heartening to hear from Deloitte’s the progress which had been made and thanked Mr Bartle and his team for their continued efforts in producing the 2018/19 and 2019/20 set of accounts, which were appended to the supplement agenda.

Mr Tuckley said clearly there had been huge difficulties experienced in relation to the accounts which were unacceptable and disappointing. He said the 2020/21 accounts were progressing well and significant improvements had been made to processes and procedures plus the recruitment of additional staff.

Mr Tuckley said the report by Mr Worth had led to a detailed improvement plan being developed which was phased into immediate improvements and those which would take a longer time to achieve. He said the Grant Thornton report from June 2018 and the CIPFA report from 2017 were also attached for information. Mr Tuckley said it was clear the issues highlighted in the previous reports were still issues that the Council needed to address. Mr Tuckley commented that several internal audit reports had stated that not enough progress had been made regarding key governance issues including the Grant Thornton review which was commissioned by a former Corporate Director of Resources. He said this report had neither been to the Corporate Leadership Team (CLT) board or to the Executive i.e. Council or Cabinet or indeed the Audit Committee. Mr Tuckley said clearly this ought to have been the case. He said the recommendations within these reports plus the recent report looking at the year-end accounts had been worked into an improvement plan with the assistance of Internal Audit. He said the improvement plan was designed to ensure there was a sustainable and focussed attention to the key governance issues that had been highlighted in the reports. He said issues such as the declarations of officer interests, issues relating to hospitality registers and policy reviews that go towards the core set of ethics and culture of the council plus the implementation of internal audit recommendations and application of risk management had been discussed by the CLT board in recent weeks.

Mr Tuckley said work relating to the financial recovery had been prioritised as well as the governance issues that had been highlighted in the reports. Mr Tuckley said there was a strong commitment across the council to address this and said he believed progress had been made, especially regarding the 2020/21 accounts. In relation to the previous reports Mr Tuckley said he was at a loss as to why the reports had not been made available to the CLT Board or Executive and said he had investigated the passage of the reports. He said the reports had not been to the Resources Directorate’s DLT (Directorate Leadership Team) board either and other than stating the facts, he could not add anything further to this.

Lastly, Mr Tuckley said  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4