Agenda item

A joint report of the Chief Executive and Directors of Finance and Legal and Governance Services was presented to inform Members of the Audit Committee of the outcome of an exercise to ensure the Council took the opportunity to learn lessons from standards complaints that had involved corporate governance issues.  These issues arose from complaints investigations that had not completed by the end of the previous administration in relation to Elected Members who were not returned to office.

 

The report identified actions to strengthen Middlesbrough Council’s corporate governance arrangements.  The findings in the report were reflective of the governance concerns identified within the draft Annual Governance Statement 2020/21 and the External Auditor’s Value for Money judgement for the same period. 

 

On 3 July 2023, the Council’s Standards Committee considered its quarterly report on code of conduct complaints.  During the life of the last political administration 142 complaints were received.  Ten of these complaints, had not reached a conclusion as at the 2023 local elections and related to Members who were not re-elected into office.

 

The report set out the themes of the lessons that had been learned and the action taken as follows:

 

Member Induction and Training

 

The Council delivered an induction programme offer to members in 2019 that covered the key corporate governance processes, the differences in roles between officers and members and member obligations in relation to conduct.  This training approach had been scaled back during austerity to a detailed guide and a series of briefings held in the first few months of election. While there was, and is, a member training budget, this was relatively small and had to be used on occasion to cover other costs.  The result of this was that levels of knowledge around processes and roles and responsibilities differed across the cohort of members in office during that

time.  The Democratic Services team did not have the capacity to be able to proactively engage with Members to ensure they attended training, gather meaningful feedback on training and put in place a wider programme of training on a cyclical basis to ensure learning was retained.

 

As a result of learning from this and as part of the Corporate Governance Improvement Plan, there had been significant involvement from the Council’s Organisational Development (OD) team, who were training specialists.  The OD team worked with Democratic Services, Members and other officers to agree a revised approach to training for those members who were inducted following the May 2023 local elections.

 

Additional resourcing had also been identified to fund training and development going forward to ensure the improved offer was delivered on a cyclical basis.  This was agreed by Executive on 19 July 2023.

 

This issue was identified by the Council’s External auditors in the 2020/21

Audit Results report, considered by the Committee on 22 July 2022.  Annual

Governance Statement actions and delivery of the Corporate Governance Improvement Plan had included actions to strengthen training of officers and members on a range of topics.

 

Adherence to roles and responsibilities

 

Linked to the induction and training issues, a number of the standards complaints alleged that individuals had not adhered to the remit of their role, either allegedly taking decisions that exceeded their authority or not followed a proper governance route in order to take a decision that they had the authority to take.

 

Improving understanding of roles and responsibilities and the roles and responsibilities of officers had been a key theme that underpinned the revised member induction programme and would continue through the delivery of additional training on corporate governance good practice during 2023/24.  There was a detailed Corporate Governance programme in place which was being delivered to officers.  All training materials had also been made available to Members through the Council’s online training portal and included:

 

•           Principles, Values and the Constitution.

•           Procurement Procedure Rules.

•           Financial Procedure Rules.

•           Programme and Project Management.

•           Risk Management.

•           Consultation and Engagement.

•           Committee Report Writing.

•           Decision Making.

•           GDPR and Information Governance.

 

Declarations of Interest

 

A number of complaints both within the outstanding complaints, and closed complaints during the last administration related to declarations of interest. Compliance with declarations of interest was also identified as an issue by the Council’s External Auditors (EY).  Since July 2022, Democratic Services team have conducted regular checks of declarations within meetings against declarations of interests forms as part of steps to support Members in compliance with their legal obligations.  This had also included cross checking declared information with Companies House published information.  In addition, Members’ induction training following the May 2023 elections included refreshed content on the declarations of interest process.

 

Member and Officer Relationships

 

There was a theme in the outstanding complaints around Member and officer relationships and allegations of poor behaviour.  This was an area of concern in the 2020/21 and 2021/22 Annual Governance Statements and also in the 2020/21 Audit Results Report. 

 

Action to address this was undertaken within the Corporate Governance Improvement Plan that was developed in 2022/23.  The refreshed approach to this work, set out in the report to Council on 5 July 2023, included a programme of work to continue to address the cultural transformation within the Council across Member to Member and Member to officer relationships.

 

AGREED as follows that Audit Committee noted the:

 

•           outcome of lessons to be learned the outstanding code of conduct complaints.

•           crossover between issues identified in this report and the Annual Governance Statements for 2020/21 and 2021/22 (draft), the External Auditors Value for Money judgement 2020/21 and reports Council has considered on the Corporate Governance improvement journey.