Agenda item

To submit the report of the Council Leader  (attached).

The following officers from the Wales Audit Office were welcomed to the meeting to give a brief presentation and then answer members' questions.

·         Alan Hughes (Local Government Performance Audit Leader)

·         Jeremy Evans (Local Government Performance Audit Manager)

Following the presentation, members were given an opportunity to ask questions on the report.

In response to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 Examinations (page 27 of the agenda), that detailed to which extent the Council had acted in accordance with the sustainable development principle when establishing the new Youth Service, concern was raised by a number of members about the Audit Office's conclusion that more work was needed by the Council to fully establish the five ways of working.  The Auditors' observations that the service provision had been mostly driven by financial constraints rather than an understanding of long-term service demand, was questioned. 

The former Cabinet member who had been responsible for instigating the process of re-organising the Youth Service emphasised that the purpose of the re-modelling was to establish a longer-term view, to consider how to modernise the service, making it sustainable and more suited to the needs of young people today and in future. She was also of the opinion that consideration had been given to the five ways of working and the well-being objectives, and she referred to the consultation with young people and collaboration with other local organisations involved with young people as examples of this.

The former Cabinet member and others' observations were echoed by the Leader, who emphasised the strong feeling among members that the Audit Office's conclusions were totally wrong.  He argued that it could be stated that all the changes made by the Council over recent years had been motivated by financial cuts. In spite of this, the Council had found new ways of working that addressed the requirements of the Well-being Act, and the Youth Service was a classic example of this, and had been praised as being effective and innovative, and an example to be followed by other councils.  He added that what the members had heard undermined their trust in the Audit Office's ability to reach correct conclusions, and he called for a dialogue between the Council and the Audit Office on this specific point in order to move forward in future.

In response, the Local Government Performance Audit Manager noted that the Audit Office's viewpoint differed to the Council's opinion on this specific matter.  He explained that discussions had been held with various officers within the Council as part of the process, and that the Audit Office's evidence was based on these interviews. He was also satisfied with the thoroughness of the work delivered during the year. However, he acknowledged that revisiting the situation could lead to a different opinion, and that consideration could be given to conducting a follow-up review on this issue in future. This work could include fuller discussions with officers, service users and the former Cabinet member.

Reference was made to the review of Local Government Services to Rural Communities: Community Assets Transfer (page 45 of the agenda). A question was asked about the rationale for transferring community assets to the community for next to nothing, which reduced the potential to generate an income for the County Council to enable it maintain existing services.  In response, the Local Government Performance Audit Manager noted that he would take the question back to the project team that had been responsible for producing and developing the report's conclusions in the appendices to the Annual Improvement Report, and he would provide the member with a written response.

RESOLVED to accept the Annual Improvement Report 2018/19, subject to further discussions on some of the items within the report.