Issue - meetings

Waverley Borough Council encourages staff and others to report any cases of suspected wrongdoing or misconduct, illegal acts, or failure to act within the Council, as part of its commitment to act with integrity and openness in the best interest of its residents and communities. To govern any such disclosures, the Council has a Whistleblowing Policy.

The Whistleblowing Policy has been reviewed and updated.

Reccomendation

The Audit and Risk Committee is recommended:

To adopt the proposed revised Whistleblowing Policy, as set out in Appendix 1 to this report.

Rochelle Tapping, Borough Solicitor and Deputy Monitoring Officer (Interim), outlined the report and policy set out in the agenda.

It was highlighted that the existing Whistleblowing Policy was adopted in 2019 and has now been reviewed and updated.  A further review will be carried out in June 20206.

The new policy would encourage staff to report wrongdoing and tries to align with Guildford Brough Council as far as it is appropriate to do so, whilst accepting there are local differences.

Members considered the documents and made the following comments and recommendations:

·         Section 17 (page 14 of the agenda pack) had a list of contact points outside the Council  - Officers were asked why these did not contain contact details (tel. No or email) as the previous policy had? It was explained this was to avoid issues with changing personnel or details.

·         Members asked if there were any significant differences with Guildford policy. Officers would circulate this information offline.

·         It was noted that in the previous policy an external legal officer could consider a whistleblowing report. Officers advised this was still possible and was set out in section 17.

·         The Chair felt the last paragraph of section 8 should be toned down as whistleblowers may not be comfortable speaking to their senior managers. It was agreed that ‘as applicable’ would be added.

·         It was felt that bullet point 4 of section 8 should include ‘promptly’.

·         Officers pointed out that an example of the reports to Audit and Risk were outline in the next agenda item.

·         Members asked how many whistleblowing reports were made last year. Officers advised this was outlined in the next agenda item.

 Decision

The Audit and Risk Committee AGREED to adopt the revised Whistleblowing Policy subject to the addition of the comments and amendments of the Committee.