Decision details

The Committee received a report from the Internal Audit Manager outlining that the Council’s Strategic Risk Register (SRR) had been reviewed and updated to reflect changes since its last update in November 2018.

In relation to the current document, the highest (red) risks remained the same as those last year.  However, the Local Plan risk was removed by the Director of Place as it had been adopted in 2018 and the Littlehampton Leisure Centre risk was also removed as the building has been commissioned and opened last year.

It should be noted that the SRR is a ‘point-in-time’ document (although the risks would be on the radar of Corporate Management Team (CMT) and Officers).  In order to meet Committee timescales, it was reviewed and updated by the Governance & Risk Group (chaired by the Director of Place) in late September and considered by CMT in October 2019.

Since that time, it would be noted that there has been a Snap General Election called and also an extension to the target date for Brexit.  In addition, a report on additional Council strategic targets was presented to Full Council on 13 November 2019. In light of these, it has already been decided to conduct an interim Officer review in January so that a further updated SRR can be brought back to the Committee at its February 2020 meeting. In view of the revised targets proposal, it was also anticipated that the Local Plan would be brought back on to the SRR, along with a new risk on Climate Change. By that time, the outcome of the General Election would be known, and the result will then impact the direction and progress of Brexit.

Members had a full discussion on the SRR, the key points were:

§  Item 6a Homelessness as there were a host of issues on this topic it was suggested that should a review of the Local Plan take place, it considered the need to house those in temporary accommodation and to cut waiting lists as a  priority.

§  Item 17 Elections it was suggested that the Fixed Term Parliament Act was not working and that this risk should be given a higher priority. The Internal Audit Manager agreed to feed this into the January 2020 review.

The Committee then noted and approved the revised Strategic Risk Register.