In accordance with its responsibility for governance and risk, the Committee considered the report of the Chief Executive setting out the draft Annual Governance Statement for 2011/12 to be signed by the Chief Executive and the Leader of the Council and accompany the Statement of Accounts.  It was noted that the draft Annual Governance Statement would be considered by the Cabinet at its meeting on 13 June 2012, and the views of the Audit Committee would be reported to that meeting.

In considering the draft Annual Governance Statement, the Committee took into account a document published by Grant Thornton entitled “Local Government Governance Review 2012”.  This document was published shortly after publication of the agendas for the meetings of the Audit Committee and the Cabinet.  It was suggested that it would be a relevant addition to the actions for 2012/13 if this document were to be assessed in comparison with the Annual Governance Statement.  Any changes that would benefit the Council could then be made to future Statements.

Arising from its consideration of the other actions listed in the table in Section 5.2 of the draft Annual Governance Statement, the Committee noted that the decision made by the Council at a special meeting held on 15 December 2010 that a report be submitted to the Council at the appropriate time outlining the advantages and disadvantages of returning to the Committee system and the procedures necessary to achieve that was missing from the actions for 2012/13.  It was suggested that the Cabinet be recommended to consider including this as a separate action point or as part of the action point relating to the OSC Review of Governance.

The Committee also identified a number of grammatical and typographical errors in the document.  The Head of Finance and Customer Services confirmed that these would be corrected prior to the document being signed by the Chief Executive and the Leader.

RESOLVED:

1.  That the draft Annual Governance Statement for 2011/12 be endorsed subject to the correction of grammatical and typographical errors in the document and the following:-

  That the Cabinet be recommended to add the following governance issue to the table in Section 5.2 of the draft Annual Governance Statement:-

That the Cabinet be recommended to consider the following decision made by the Council at a special meeting held on 15 December 2010 as a separate action point in the table in Section 5.2 of the draft Annual Governance Statement or as part of the action point relating to the OSC Review of Governance:-

“That a report be submitted to the Council at the appropriate time outlining the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14