The report of the Risk and Insurance Manager is attached

Contact: Angela Beechey 01743 252073

The Committee received the report of the Risk and Insurance Manager – copy attached to the signed minutes – which provided an overview of the activity of the Risk, Insurance & Resilience Team during 2020/2021 and a synopsis of the current risk exposure of the authority in relation to Strategic, Operational and Project risks. It also identified some key activity for 2021/2022.

The Risk and Insurance Manager introduced and amplified her report.  She was pleased to report that the Audit review of risk management this year had again identified the assurance level as ‘Good’.  She explained that all risks were now on a SharePoint site so that risk owners had access to update the risks at any time to allow real time reporting.

The Risk and Insurance Manager reported that each Strategic risk had a detailed profile and Action Plan sitting behind them, along with an implementation date and were linked to the Annual Governance Statement targeted outcomes.  Of the 16 strategic risks, there were 11 high, 3 medium, 2 low and no very low risks.

The Risk and Insurance Manager updated members in relation to strategic, operational and project risk management.  She explained that the Opportunity Risk Management Strategy was reviewed annually and reported to the Executive Directors, Cabinet and Audit Committee. 

Turning to Business Continuity, the Risk and Insurance Manager confirmed that the arrangements remained robust and that the detailed tactical plans were constantly reviewed.  Emergency planning continued to be put to the test with the main focus being on the continued response to and recovery from Covid-19.

In response to a query, the Risk and Insurance Manager confirmed that all 128 operational risk registers had a named lead officer as the overall risk owner.  The Risk and Insurance Manager explained the key things they looked at when considering a strategic risk including what controls were currently in place and what additional controls were required in order to mitigate the risk.  Also, if the implementation date had not been achieved the risk owner would be challenged.

In response to a query, the Risk and Insurance Manager explained the four classification levels for operational risks and that a likelihood of impact matrix was used to ensure that each risk was scored on the same basis.

RESOLVED:

To accept the position as set out in the report.