Agenda item

The Audit Committee is asked to consider the revised Financial Regulations (to follow) and recommend them to the Council, in compliance with Audit Committee Terms of Reference under Article 8 of the Constitution. Specifically, the Audit Committee is required to maintain an overview of the Council’s Constitution in respect of financial regulations.

Recommendation

It is recommended that the Committee recommends the revised Financial Regulations to the Council for adoption.

Peter Vickers, Head of Finance, introduced the revised Financial Regulations (attached) to the Committee. The Financial Regulations had last been updated in April 2015 and had been rewritten in line with the Council’s commitment to continual review within the Annual Governance Statement.

The objective of the revision was to ensure that the Financial Regulations reflect the full scope of the Council’s required governance arrangements; to remain secure in relation to risk and statutory compliance whilst incorporating changes in technology, service delivery and corporate priorities.

The revised Financial Regulations were aligned to the Council’s Constitution, Contract Procurement Rules and Scheme of Delegation, all of which had been updated within the 2017/18 financial year.

The layout and structure of the Financial Regulations had been revised to facilitate ease of reading and clarity of understanding. Use of headings and sub headings had been enhanced to aid navigation of the regulations.

The following changes had been made to content:

a.         New section: Purpose and key principles overarching the regulations;

b.         New section: Statutory requirements, compliance and responsibilities are described and explained;

c.         Content of the previous Financial Regulations has been reordered under a “financial framework” inclusive of updated and enhanced governance criteria. The regulations were previously grouped under five themes.

d.         The Scheme of Virement has been revised to enable services to self manage budgets with a greater degree of autonomy, in line with the changes to the Executive approval threshold of £100,000 and minimising Management Board intervention.

The Scheme of Virement had been redesigned to enable service managers to be more proactive in managing budgets with minimal bureaucracy. A new electronic purchase ordering facility would be going live in the new year that limits managers to only commit expenditure within a pre-existing budget provision. Using electronic workflow approval process, managers would be able to identify and effect a virement within the approval limits on their directly controllable budgets. Full details are set out in Annexe 1 of the Financial Regulations.

The Committee noted that the document was much more reader-friendly. Members felt that the regulations provided a robust framework, ensuring that all checks and balances are in place without imposing any unnecessary delays. The Committee also found the glossary to be a very useful addition.

Cllr Frost was concerned that the Agresso system update hadn’t been fully implemented as there was still no link with the housing maintenance system. Peter Vickers responded that work was under way in the background, being led by Walter Stockdale, Financial Services Manager, and that the full roll-out would be complete in January 2018.

The Committee agreed that this was a very important piece of work and asked that it be brought to the attention of all members, in particular the Executive, and that it be suggested that they retain a copy of the document for easy reference. Officers would be arranging training sessions for managers on this in due course and Members suggested also inviting the Portfolio Holder to attend.

The Committee thanked officers for their hard work on producing such an accessible document and now

RECOMMENDS that:

2.    The revised Financial Regulations be approved and adopted.