Issue - meetings

Oral Report

The committee was advised that the briefing note accompanying the oral update included exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972.  It was therefore recommended that this item of business be moved into Part II of the agenda.

Resolved: That this item of business be moved into Part II of the agenda.

This item was therefore considered following Item 13 of the agenda (Exclusion of Press and Public)

Exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act, 1972. It was considered that in all the circumstances of the case the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighed the public interests in disclosing the information).

The committee considered a briefing note together with an oral update by the Director of Finance setting out an update on delays and overspends on major projects, with specific reference to the Central Lancashire Strategic Site.

It was reported that Governance of the capital programme had been strengthened under the auspices of the Capital Board where responsibility for oversight and challenge of cost estimates and capital budgets sits. A comprehensive review of the projects for 2018/19 including prior year slippage had been undertaken by project and programme managers, supported by finance and commissioning.  The primary purpose of the review was to propose a delivery programme for 2018/19 which was approved by Cabinet in September and which now formed the agreed baseline for monitoring purposes.  The review was focused on:

·  Updating the delivery programme for 2018/19 informed by the delivery performance in 2017/18 and previous years.

·  Reviewing the level of funding available for unallocated budgets and the requirement for these to be continued to be carried forward.

·  Removal of budgets previously included in 2018/19 which have been carried forward from previous years where there is no expectation or plan of delivery in 2018/19. 

·  Of the new approved projects a realistic assessment of 2018/19 deliverability was made with delivery timeframes and budgets being moved to future years where appropriate.

This gave a proposed delivery programme for 2018/19 which had been risk-assessed as being deliverable and to which project and programme managers would be held accountable using the following actions:

·  Detailed monitoring of the delivery programme through 2018/19 to ensure slippage is reported in a timely manner and a robust level of challenge is provided to programme and project managers to ensure delivery remains on track.

·  Performance reports developed to enable the Capital Board to undertake this monitoring and challenge. 

Following discussion and questions to officers, Members requested that a progress report on the implementation of the above arrangements be presented to the next meeting of the committee on 28 January 2019.

Resolved: - That:

(i)  The briefing note and oral update be noted;

(ii)  A progress report on the implementation of the above arrangements be presented to the next meeting of the Audit, Risk and Governance Committee on 28 January 2019.