Agenda item

The Corporate Risk Register is reviewed and updated in line with the requirements of the Council’s Risk Management Framework.

Quarterly updates reflecting revisions are reported to the Audit and Governance Committee, this report highlights the changes since the last update.

It is proposed that the Committee consider and provide comments to officers on the revised Corporate Risk Register.

[20 Minutes]

          Upon the invitation of the Chair, the Insurance, Risk and Procurement Manager presented the report to the Committee, which highlighted the updates to the Corporate Risk Register. The new report template had now been adopted, with one of the aims being to make the entries more succinct, and to focus on the key mitigations and further actions. The review of all risks had been undertaken by the Corporate Leadership Team on 15 October 2024. The risk register summary was attached as appendix 3 on page 319 of the agenda.

          The Chair then invited the Chief Executive to give her update on CRR2 (Organisational capacity and transformation). This was currently a medium risk on the Corporate Risk Register, and an update had been provided to the Corporate Support Committee in January this year.

The Chief Executive explained that absence and turnover were both monitored on a monthly basis by the Corporate Leadership Team, and were presented to the Corporate Support Committee and Policy and Finance Committee in the quarterly KPI reports. Regarding sickness absence, quarter 2 KPIs for 2024/25 showed that for the rolling year 01 October 2023 to 30 September 2024 3.34% of working time was lost due to sickness absence. Recorded absence showed that whilst overall absence recorded as stress related accounted for 0.7% of working time lost, 0.6% was recorded as personal and 0.1% as work related.  Stress was the largest cause of sickness absence of all sickness absence reasons, with the majority of this being long term absences.

The following actions had been taken to address stress related absence:

• An employee Assistance programme was available to all staff which provided confidential counselling and support services across a range of topics (relationships, childcare, finance, stress and anxiety, family issues)
• Occupational Health provided more specialist mental health support options for staff with complex needs.
• Staff had free Freedom Leisure membership, access to health MOTs and 1 to 1 sessions with the Wellbeing Team.  Encouraging positive physical health was important to mental health resilience
• There had been training for managers on mental health awareness to better support their teams and ADC had trained mental health first aiders available to provide initial support. Stress risk assessments were carried out when required
• There were employment policies which encouraged and supported work-life balance, enabling flexible working arrangements to support personal commitments alongside work
• Human Resources (HR) continuously monitored sickness absence, providing advice and guidance to managers where necessary. Managers were required to stay in touch with staff and conduct ‘return to work’ interviews to understand the causes of absence and better support recovery.
• Culture change and initiatives to encourage positive staff engagement.

Recruitment and Retention was a regular topic for discussion at both the Corporate Support and Policy and Finance Committee meetings when KPIs were reported. A moderate level of turnover was healthy for an organisation as it brought in fresh perspectives and new skills. The Councils current target and performance of 14% was around the national average for similar Local Authorities. Turnover needed to be considered in a wider context of organisation wide initiatives such as staff engagement, career development and progression, which were some of the reasons that staff left an organisation – this was inevitable with a smaller/medium size employer and was an increasing problem as overall staff levels had decreased.

ADC was having difficulty recruiting into a number of more specialist technical posts. This was being addressed as follows:

• Reward Strategies/pay levels – A review was being carried out of where ADC sat in relation to other local government employers across a range of roles. It was recognised that ADC had always been in competition with the private sector for some technical roles. 
• Some roles in difficult to recruit areas such as Planning and Building Control attracted a market supplement, but even this was not sufficient in areas of national shortage.
• ADC had always been in competition with neighbouring local authorities with staff regularly moving for promotion etc as many authorities were within easy travelling distance.  This had been exacerbated following covid, now that hybrid working was an option for most roles, reducing travel to work, which also helped our own recruitment. Workers were much more mobile and there was strong evidence to suggest that many workers would not move to an employer that did not offer significant flexibility. This also helped us to retain staff whose personal circumstances might have changed.
• ADC’s career paths had been reviewed and training continued to be provided with technical staff, with apprenticeships in areas such as Finance and Planning.   
• Organisation wide culture change initiatives to encourage positive staff engagement had been implemented. Being happy in the workplace was not only about reward, but also general working conditions, relationships and feeling valued.

The Chair then invited questions from Members regarding the update on CRR2. It was asked how many people were in the Wellbeing Team, or whether it was something staff in other areas took on as an additional responsibility. The Chief Executive explained there was one dedicated Wellbeing Officer in the HR team, although she stated it was the responsibility of all, especially those in the Senior Leadership Team, and should be embedded in the organisation as part of the culture. There had recently been a health and wellbeing week which staff engaged with and included fun activities.

The Chair felt that from a Member’s perspective the culture in the Council had changed significantly since the last election. He felt this Committee was a positive representation of cross party working. He felt Members could have a direct impact on how the Council was seen and the wellbeing of staff, with how they conducted themselves in meetings and whilst in public. He believed a lot of people would go into the public sector for the whole package such as pension, sick pay, policies, and not necessarily the salary. He was particularly Interested in hybrid working, and asked for further information around whether people’s locations could impact whether or not they could apply to work for ADC, or whether there were some restrictions around hybrid working. The Chief Executive explained this needed to be looked at on a case by case basis depending on the role, as there were some roles where staff needed to be physically present, for example Planning Officers carrying out site visits. She also highlighted that some people did not like working at home. Some staff now lived a considerable distance from ADC, but had been recruited into positions because they were the right people for the job. Hybrid working would be reviewed as part of the accommodation review.

Questions were then invited around the rest of the report. One Member had more questions around CRR7 (Climate Change) and CRR11a (Major Project – Alexandra Theatre). He had been in touch with the risk owners around these.

One Member had submitted a question in advance of the meeting which was around the requirement that all "BCPs and other critical information are indeed stored in a separate server to enable access in case of IT failure and that Managers retain up-to-date paper copies" and he asked whether this was successfully validated on the exercise due to have been conducted in November 2024. The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer confirmed that Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and other critical information were stored on a separate server, and that paper copies were held. The exercise undertaken in November was very useful and tested the robustness of the BCPs, and he felt some lessons had been learnt.

          It was asked whether there was an intention to involve Members in emergency planning. The Chief Executive explained emergency planning fully sat within the remit of Officers, however Officers should communicate to the Leader and Group Leaders in the event of an emergency situation. The role of Members in an emergency would be to share relevant information with constituents. The Member suggested that Councillors be updated annually on the work that Officers were doing regarding emergency planning.

          It was asked whether there was an update on CRR19 (Littlehampton Harbour Board). The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer confirmed a conclusion was nearing, but it was not known when the outcome would be received.

          In relation to CRR1, local government funding had been moving to speculative pots of grants rather than sustained long-term funding, and it was asked whether there was any indication from government that there would be a move to more sustainable funding. The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer explained that the early indication was positive, and he would know more when the local government finance settlement was received on 19 December 2024.

          The Committee noted the report.