Agenda item

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It was reported that there had been four registrations to speak at the meeting under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme.

Mr Andy Mendus, former Independent Member of this Committee, who spoke on absence management concerns suggesting that in future it should merit a continuing reference under the section 'Significant Governance Issues' in the annual governance statement.  He mentioned that Mr Hammill had been deferred from speaking at the previous July Committee meeting; and he requested further information regarding the Director of Governance  ‘reviewing the role of independents’ across the Council.

Ms G Swinburn, who raised concerns regarding the publication of this Agenda which was published with the Risk Register for the York Central Project as an item ‘to follow’, then re-published shortly later with this item having been removed.  Furthermore, two additional items were published a few days before the meeting under ‘Urgent Business’ one of those items on Constitutional Amendments, the other was an item for information.  The Forward Plan had not been published for a number of months.  Her concerns were regarding democracy, transparency, governance and following the legal framework set out in the Council’s Constitution. 

Mr John Young who spoke on the Citizen & External Audits (2018 and 2020) of the CYC Draft Annual Accounts, with especial reference to the Developers Contributions to Earmarked Funds (S106 Contributions) requesting transparency and evidence that this allocation was being spent appropriately.

Cllr Crawshaw spoke in his capacity as Chair of the Customer and

Corporate Services Scrutiny Management Committee(CCSMC)

regarding the published Agenda for this meeting.  He outlined the

circumstances which had led to the CCSMC (Calling-In) meeting

held on 13 August, to discuss the decision made by the Executive

on 23 July 2020 in respect of the York Central Update.  One of the

resolutions had been a request that the Audit & Governance

Committee, when considering its next report on Key Corporate

Risks (KCRs) in September 2020, examine in depth the KCR

relating to capital projects, with any issues arising to be

reported to CCSMC.  He had therefore been uncomfortable by the

turn of events which had led to this item being published as a ‘to

follow’ item on the Agenda for this Committee, then being withdrawn

shortly thereafter and wanted to know who had intervened, on what

grounds and whether or not this had been in consultation with the

Chair of this Committee.

The Chair responded to the concerns raised by both Ms G Swinburn and Cllr Crawshaw regarding the publication of this Agenda, confirming that it had been his understanding that the Risk Register would be on the Agenda for discussion at this meeting and that he had not been consulted regarding its withdrawal from the Agenda.  He had later been assured that this item would be discussed at the November meeting of this Committee. 

The Chair explained that due to the Covid-19 emergency, this Committee had not met in April and June, therefore the Committee’s Forward Plan had been put on hold.  He expected that the Forward Plan would be on the Agenda for the next meeting of this Committee.

The Chair invited each speaker to send him their concerns in an email which he would follow up and respond to and he thanked them for their contributions.