Agenda item

Up to 30 minutes is allowed for this item. Public forum items must be about

matters that fall within the remit of the Audit Committee.

Any member of the public or councillor may participate in public forum. Public

forum items should be emailed to democratic.services@bristol.gov.uk

Pleasenote that the following deadlines will apply in relation to this meeting:

Questions - Written questions must be submitted by 5.00 pm on Friday 17

November 2017 at latest.

Petitions and statements - Petitions / written statements must be submitted by

12.00 noon on Wednesday 22 November 2017 at latest.

Questions                  

The committee noted that a public forum question had been received, as follows:

Question from Councillor Carla Denyer:

“Dear Audit Committee

At Full Council last week (14^th November) I was concerned by the contents of Full Council agenda item 18 – Decisions taken under special urgency provisions. Because of the overrunning of that meeting I reserved my remarks, considering them more fruitfully presented to you here instead.

I have no disagreement with the need for the ‘special urgency provisions’ in the constitution. I absolutely understand why sometimes the Cabinet’s carefully planned agenda gets overtaken by events and they have to make a decision on something immediately because of a change in situation that’s outside of their control.

However, it is not clear to me why none of these particular 5 agenda items could be foreseen. For example, the street lighting contract had a set expiry date – why did it catch anyone by surprise?

I am especially concerned that they were all added to the agenda using APR16 rather than APR15, meaning that the notice provided wasn’t just cut from 28 days to 5, it was cut from 28 days to a few hours in some cases.

If our Cabinet and its supporting officers do not have the foresight to predict important decisions coming up even 5 days ahead, what chance do they have to deal with the enormous challenges coming their way over the next few years?

So my question for Audit Committee is: Please will you look at these cases and if necessary make recommendations to Cabinet for how to prevent this issue continuing?

I understand (from conversations with your Vice Chair) that you already plan to look at quality and transparency of decision making reports, and so I ask that late reports are considered as part of the same piece of work.”

The committee noted the written reply, as follows:

“If any decision needs to be taken as a matter of special urgency, a proper process must be followed in that the Monitoring Officer must be satisfied that there is no option but to take the decision before it can be put on the next forward plan, and the Chair of Scrutiny must agree.

All of the decisions reported went through that process.

There are numerous reasons why a report may be late and these are usually beyond the control of officers or due to changes in process and governance arrangements.

With regard to these decisions:

Local Growth Fund bid – 7 March 2017 Cabinet:  The LEP (the funding body for this grant) were unable to clarify the total amount of funding BCC could bid for until very late in the bidding process.  This led to a delay in selecting schemes for inclusion in the bid (as we weren’t sure what the total value of the project could be). The reason for urgency was that it was critical that the Council secured approval on the 7^th  March and not later as Bristol would miss the LEP Investment Board bid deadline of the 31^st  March 2017 (for consideration by the LEP Investment Board in May 2017). This would place significant time pressures on the individual projects we are seeking funding for.

Dunmail housing scheme – 16 May 2017 Cabinet:  No information available by the date of this Audit Committee but can be provided.

Parkview offices lease change – 26 June 2017 Cabinet:  A late opportunity arose to change the lease at Parkview which would enable the Council to end it in the coming months having relocated all the staff based there.  This would deliver around £1m per annum recurring savings for the budget. 

Leasing out of offices at 100 Temple Street for Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) – 19 September 2017 Cabinet:  Office design work was completed in late August and at that point it became apparent that the budget was not enough to undertake the works, based on an original estimate for the January Cabinet. This then necessitated a requirement for an urgent report to approve the additional budget and spend quickly so that the works could proceed in time to meet the DWP occupation start date on the 1^st November 2017.

Street lighting contract extension – 19 September Cabinet:  The existing contract needed to be extended to allow for the procurement process for a new three year contract to be followed.  The previous administration’s Cabinet in November 2015 had approved the procurement and extending the contract to do so, but for various reasons (advice from Legal and Procurement requiring a change in approach, internal resources including departure of the Street Lighting Manager) the tender process was delayed and a further 10 months was needed before a new contract could be awarded.  The annual value of this work exceeded £500k, hence the need for Cabinet to approve a waiver of procurement regulations to extend the current contract.  Not doing so would mean that we would have been out of contract from the end of September for the street lighting maintenance function and would not have been able to issue orders to keep lights on to meet the statutory safety obligations under the Highways Act 1980.” 

Statements                

The committee noted that public forum statements had been received, as follows:

1. Councillor Eddy – subject: recruitment of the former Chief Executive.

2. Councillor Hopkins – subject: recruitment of the former Chief Executive.

The statements were noted.  The Chair advised the committee that she had also received a joint letter from Councillors Eddy, Hopkins and O’Rourke advising that they had written to BDO (the Council’s external auditor) requesting an investigation of issues referred to in the above statements.  It was noted that the external auditor would separately consider their own response to that letter.