Report by Alison Chubbock, Assistant Director of Finance & S151 Officer.

The Assistant Director of Finance &S151 Officer presented the tri-annual report

The three policies were all linked and in the interim period they had been updated for small changes such as names and job titles and the report and associated appendices were the result of a full review which should be undertaken at least every three years.

How well these policies had worked was very hard to judge as many of the reasons for having such policies in place was for prevention rather than to provide an update after the event.

As it had been an unusual couple of years, the Whistle Blowing policy had been used quite often particularly when the Covid grants were in place.  Members of the public had contacted the Council under this particular Policy, but it had been found that these concerns mainly referred to the furlough scheme and had been signposted to HMRC.

There had been one fraudulent case reported to the Council in respect of the Covid grant scheme and this had been passed onto the Anglia Revenues & Benefits Partnership (ARP) to investigate but had since been deemed not to be fraudulent, and was also raised to the External Auditors as part of the end of year accounts..

The Money Laundering Policy (MLP) was mainly used by ARP in particular the Enforcement Agents, if they happened to be offered large sums of cash to pay off any debt, and this would be reported through this Policy accordingly.

Other areas that could have an impact on the MLP were explained.

The policies themselves were not particularly modern and should really be available online and therefore if approved, the Finance Team would work with the Digital Team to set up an on-line form for the public to use to improve the service.

Mr Fowler drew attention to page 122 of the agenda pack in respect of the Council’s complaints procedure and felt that it would be good idea to have a link, under the complaints procedure to the Whistle Blowing Policy, on the Council’s website to identify any distinction between the Policies.

Mr Fowler then drew attention to page 123 of the agenda pack where it stated that nay concerns relating to the Chief Officers listed should be reported to Ernst & Young, but he had noticed that Ernst & Young’s contact details had not been included.

The Assistant Director of Finance & S151 Officer agreed that a link could certainly be included, and the said contact details would be added.

Referring to page 115 of the agenda pack under implementation, the Chairman asked what evidence this Committee had that Service Managers were making sure that all staff were familiar with the content of these Policies.

Members were informed that this would form part of Services Managers training. These Policies, if approved, would also be added to the Intranet, and for clarity, such evidence would be reported to a future meeting.

Further questions were asked including a concern about the emphasis on financial fraud and possible missing  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14