Agenda item

The Committee is recommended to:

1.     Consider and review the Action Plan attached at Appendix 1B;

2.     Consider any proposed amendments or feedback that it wishes to make on the action plan; and

3.     Submit that feedback in a report to Cabinet at its meeting on 21 March 2022.

The Committee considered a report set out on pages 21 to 100 of the agenda which detailed the action plan created in response to the recommendations made in the Report in the Public Interest (RIPI), that had been accepted at the extraordinary Council meeting held on 3 February 2022. The action plan had been referred to both the Scrutiny and Overview Committee and the General Purposes and Audit Committee (GPAC) for comment before the final version is due to be considered by Cabinet on 21 March 2021. This process was the same as the one used for the previous RIPI considered in November 2020.

In relation to recommendation 7, the Vice-Chair of the Committee confirmed that he had sought further information about the Council’s policies on data retention prior to the meeting. The response received had been reassuring, with an identified Data Protection Officer in place and a regular review schedule for the related policies. It was confirmed that a recent data breach relating to the Members app, had been immediately referred to the Information Commissioner and an investigation into cause of the breach was currently ongoing.

In response to a question about which of the actions set out in the plan was likely to be the most challenging to implement, it was highlighted that the Council’s record keeping had not been where it should be and a large piece of work across the Council was required to put this in order. The first step would be to review current practice regarding data retention and then put a new procedure in place for the organisation. The introduction of a new procedure would need to be supported by training for staff to ensure the new process was embedded in the culture of the organisation. It was important to ensure all staff were properly living any new processes introduced as a result of the RIPI.

The point was made by the Committee that document retention should also apply to the different versions of documentation to ensure that the history of a project could be traced if needed.

Given the scale of work proposed in the action plan, it was questioned whether there was sufficient capacity within the Council to ensure delivery. In response it was highlighted that one of the proposals agreed at the extraordinary Council meeting was to incorporate the action plan in the wider Croydon Renewal Plan, which was managed by the Programme Management Office. This would ensure that progress on delivery was regularly reported, allowing any issues to be identified at an early stage.

As the action plan referred to the introduction of a twelve-month forward plan, an update on the development of this was requested. It was confirmed that work had started in early 2021 to map out all the decisions the Council was expected to take up until the election in May 2022.  That went into operation in March 2021 to help manage these meetings and was shared with officers over the summer. Copies had also been shared with Scrutiny Chairs to assist with work programming. The next step was to make it routinely available to all Members and the public, which was likely to happen after the election once know the new priorities of the Mayor could be mapped.

It was confirmed that as actions set out in the action plan were completed, the Internal Audit team would be testing the delivery of these actions to provide additional reassurance on delivery.  It was also confirmed that the version of the action plan presented to Cabinet would have the gaps in the current version around delivery dates and the responsible Cabinet Member completed.

The point was made that it was important to have different layers of process in place to manage projects, with a greater level of rigour and structure needed for large scale projects such as the Fairfield Halls refurbishment. Processes were also needed to manage the client side of those projects contracted to a third parties and not delivered by the Council directly.  It was agreed that action 8 should be strengthened to emphasis this point.

Given the RIPI referred to the Committee having scrutinised the Fairfield Halls refurbishment project and not being given the full picture on the status of the project, concern was raised that the provision of information to Scrutiny was not directly addressed in the action plan.  It was highlighted that an information protocol had recently been produced which set out an expectation that information would be supplied to Scrutiny and there was a Statutory Scrutiny Officer in place to seek out the information when requested by Scrutiny. In almost all instances it would be expected that information would be provided to Scrutiny upon request.

It was suggested that Scrutiny could recommend to the Cabinet an amendment to action 1.4 to include the follow additional wording in italics: -

‘Progress reports on the delivery of major projects to Cabinet will also incorporate an assurance section that the requirements are to ensure the arrangements are lawful and have been met e.g. contracts signed, land correctly transferred etc prior to committing the Council contractually. These reports will also be available to the Scrutiny and Overview Committee in order to enable them to fully scrutinise the delivery of major projects based on the same full suite of information that is available to the Cabinet Members.  These requirements will also be included in the new guide.’

The Committee was provided reassurance that this would address the concerns raised about the ability of Scrutiny to access the relevant information needed to fulfil its role.

As the Council was currently in the process of creating a new Workforce Strategy, it was suggested that the principles raised in the RIPI needed to be incorporated in this strategy. It was confirmed that work on the internal priorities of the Council would be fed into the Workforce Strategy as it was essential to have the workforce directed in the right places. Going forward it would also be essential to ensure that the cost of staff supporting projects was built into the delivery costs of all new projects.

Given that any future large-scale projects undertaken by the Council were likely to be related to the renewal and improvement of the Council’s housing stock, it was highlighted that there was a need to ensure that both residents, tenants and leaseholders were kept informed before and throughout the lifespan of any such projects. It was recognised that additional work was needed to strengthen the structure for resident engagement in areas such as capital works, with separate governance arrangement needed for large scale housing renewal.

It was noted that the interim Monitoring Officer had mentioned at the extraordinary Council meeting that the RIPI would be reviewed to identify whether there were any areas of concern that needed further consideration from a fraud perspective. Further explanation on the process for this was requested. The interim Monitoring Officer advised that when reading the RIPI during the preparation of his section 5 report, concern was raised about whether there could be issues of fraud from the information provided, which was the duty of the Monitoring Officer to raise.

Following the Council meeting a specialist firm had been engaged to investigate whether these concerns were real, with a report due at the end of March that would present an assessment of these concerns. It was clarified that the type of fraud referred to was an abuse of position fraud, rather than one for monetary gain. It was agreed that it was important that this clarification had been made in public to address any misconceptions created by recent press reports.

The Chair of the Committee highlighted that he had emailed the Head of Internal Audit to raise concerns about the possibility of fraudulent activity because of the information presented in the RIPI. It was confirmed that at the time of the meeting there had been no contact from the Police about their own investigation, although the Chief Executive had met with the Borough Commander who had been reassured by the process being followed by the Council.

At the conclusion of this item, the Chair thanked officers for their engagement with the Committee and noted that there would be a continued role for Scrutiny in the forthcoming year to monitor and test the delivery of the action plan once it had been agreed by the Cabinet.

Conclusions

Following its discussion of this item, the Scrutiny and Overview Committee reached the following conclusions: -

1.     The Committee was reasonably happy that the content of the action plan addressed the recommendations raised in the Report in the Public Interest.

2.     Time would need to be set aside in the scrutiny work programme in the forthcoming year to review the delivery of the action plan and where appropriate to test progress made.

3.     Given the reference in the Report in the Public Interest to the Scrutiny and Overview Committee not being presented with the complete information when it had reviewed progress on the refurbishment of Fairfield Halls, there was a need to reflect the requirement for Scrutiny to be able access information to conduct its work effectively.

4.     Although it was accepted that any decision would be made on a case-by-case basis, there needed to be scope for Scrutiny to undertake site visits on major projects where appropriate.

5.     There was recognition that the Council delivered a wide range of projects and as such there needed to be a reporting framework that could be tailored to projects of varying scale and took account of those projects not being delivered directly by the Council.

6.     The commitment towards staff training to embed new processes across the Council was welcomed by the Committee.

7.     It was agreed that processes arising from the Report in the Public Interest and the wider Croydon Renewal Plan needed to be reflected in the forthcoming Workforce Strategy.

Recommendations

The Committee agreed to submit the following recommendations for the consideration of the Cabinet when it makes its decision on the final action plan.

1.     Action 1.4 should be expanded to make reference to the ability of Scrutiny to access information, with the following wording suggested for the consideration of Cabinet: -

‘Progress reports on the delivery of major projects to Cabinet will also incorporate an assurance section that the requirements are to ensure the arrangements are lawful and have been met e.g. contracts signed, land correctly transferred etc prior to committing the Council contractually. These reports will also be available to the Scrutiny and Overview Committee in order to enable them to fully scrutinise the delivery of major projects based on the same full suite of information that is available to the Cabinet Members.  These requirements will also be included in the new guide.’     

2.     The action plan needed to reflect that future project governance should be reflective of the scale of each project, with an appropriate level of monitoring, reporting and resource allocated.