Corporate Governance Area

Lead Officer

Update

Introduce Triple Bottom Line accounting for decision making

Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance and Head of Finance

In progress.  Draft action plan and social value measures being developed and tested, at the appropriate time will be taken through Corporate Services Policy Advisory Committee.

Implement the Local Insight system providing access to a wide range of data sets borough wide to neighbourhood level.

Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance

The Local Insight System is in place and work has begun to share information with managers across the organisation and external partners on the benefits of the system.

Ensure public and stakeholder engagement on the Town Centre Strategy.

Chief Executive and Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance

An update on the Town Centre Strategy will be given to Cabinet in December. Various stakeholder activities have happened including meetings with the user group and one to one meetings.  Once the Town Centre Strategy is approved for consultation a full range of activities will be scheduled to ensure wide public engagement.

Review and update the Workforce Strategy

Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance with the Head of Human Resources

The Strategy will be coming to Committee in the new year, a workshop has been held with the wider leadership team to aid its development.

Review of the constitution beginning in Autumn 2023

Democracy and General Purposes Committee

Democracy and General Purposes maintain a regular review of the constitution with an in-depth look at the Overview and Scrutiny and Policy Advisory Committee Arrangements including a Member workshop planned for 20 November 2023.

Training for Councillors and Officers to prepare for all out elections and a four yearly term of office in 2024

Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance

The LGA will be running workshops with Councillors and Officers in November.

Training for Councillors on the Nolan Principles and Carbon Literacy Training

Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance

One session of Carbon literacy training has been held for members with a further session planned for a Saturday in the coming months to enable more members to attend. A briefing on the Nolan Principles has been organised for 1 February 2024.

Corporate risk - General Financial Uncertainty

Unexpected changes to government funding, failure to achieve income or savings targets, and increases in inflation and contractor costs and deteriorating economic environment

Director of Finance, Resources & Business Improvement

The Committee have been provided with an update on risks to the Budget by the Director of Finance, Resources and Business Improvement on this agenda, a number of risks and mitigations are set out in that report.

Corporate risk - Greater challenge or failure for a general election in the next three years Elections Act 2022 implications in terms of Voter ID, Postal Votes and Overseas Voters.

Chief Executive and Director of Strategy, Insight and Governance

Key staff have undertaken training on the changes. The team are analysing risks to plan for mitigation including looking at additional communication with householders in the Borough and earlier briefings for Candidates and Agents.

Corporate risk - Significant changes in construction costs which may also result in a contractor insolvency as they are generally locked into delivering schemes at a fixed price, and so need to manage their exposure to rising costs in their supply chain.

Inflation continues to rise and a significant economic event (e.g., further pandemic impacts, BREXIT, supply chain issues)

Director of Regeneration & Place

This risk is being actively managed by the following means:

·         A specialist internal team has been created to lead on all housing capital projects, “New Business & Housing Development, so our expertise as a client continues to improve.

·         This new team has appointed a single firm to act as our Employer’s Agent on all schemes from now, on, plus a single architect to work alongside the, so we start standardising our scheme designs to drive efficiencies in build costs.

·         The client team work closely with the internal procurement team, and in selections put an increased focus on quality versus price in terms of the award of tenders.

·         The client team work closely with Finance colleagues to assess the financial stability of our contractors, both pre and post contract award.

·         The Employer’s Agent actively monitors work in progress on site, to spot for negative trends in terms of quality or pace of workmanship, which are often pre-cursers to financial stability issues starting to become known.

Corporate risk - Housing pressures increasing on the Council the broader housing and cost of living crisis

Director of Regeneration & Place

This risk is being actively managed by: -

·         Increased capital investment of the Council’s own temporary accommodation portfolio.

·         The exploration of a private sector leasing scheme to secure further homes for Temporary Accommodation.

·         The Council is making good progress with its 1,000 Affordable Homes Programme, and now has purchased land sufficient for around 400 residential plots in the first 18 months since the project was launched.

·         The Council is also growing its private rented sector portfolio within Maidstone Property Holdings Limited, which further alleviates housing pressures across the borough.

·         The Council continues to operate its homelessness services, face-to-face through our community asset at Trinity Place.

·         The Council is now operating three different community larder projects at three of the most deprived postcode areas in the borough.