CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING

held by telephone/​video con­fer­ence on Fri­day 28^th May 2021 at 14.00

PRESENT (By video con­fer­en­cing unless stated otherwise)

• Xan­der McDade (Con­vener)
• Peter Argyle
• Car­o­lyn Cad­dick (Deputy Convener)
• Deirdre Fal­con­er
• Pippa Had­ley
• John Kirk
• John Lath­am
• Douglas McAdam
• Elean­or Mackintosh
• Wil­lie McKenna
• Ian McLar­en
• Wil­li­am Munro
• Anne Rae Macdonald
• Derek Ross
• Judith Webb

In Attend­ance:

• Grant Moir, Chief Executive,
• Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services
• Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Place
• Vicky Walk­er, Cor­por­ate Gov­ernance & Cor­por­ate Per­form­ance Manager
• Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development
• Alix Hark­ness, Clerk to the Board

Apo­lo­gies:

• Geva Black­ett
• Dr Fiona McLean
• Janet Hunter
• Dr Gaen­er Rodger

Wel­come and Introduction

1. Xan­der McDade the Con­vener, wel­comed every­one to the meeting.
2. Apo­lo­gies were noted.

Mat­ters Arising

1. There were no mat­ters arising.

2. Action Points Arising: None

Declar­a­tions of Interest

1. None.

Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment (Paper 1)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper I which presents the draft Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment for con­sid­er­a­tion. He thanked mem­bers involved to date for their input into the draft statement.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the following:

   a) Com­ment made that it was really good to have the state­ment, with praise for the approach adop­ted to use chal­lenge ques­tions in particular.

   b) Sug­ges­tion made to incor­por­ate a gloss­ary of terms as many of the words can have dif­fer­ent mean­ings to dif­fer­ent people. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that he was happy to pull togeth­er a gloss­ary of terms which would be sub­ject to ongo­ing review.

   c) If there was ambi­gu­ity sur­round­ing the inter­pret­a­tion of decision mak­ing respons­ib­il­ity, would the Board Con­vener have final say? The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that it was more appro­pri­ate that the Board and Seni­or Man­age­ment review any areas of ambi­gu­ity, agree decision mak­ing routes and refine the doc­u­ment on an ongo­ing basis.

   d) Could it be con­firmed that the gov­ernance respons­ib­il­ity state­ment assum­ing it was agreed today was not set in stone, the inten­tion would be to review and amend it as required on a reg­u­lar basis? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that it would be brought back to the Board for review in a year’s time with con­tinu­al reviews by the Gov­ernance Com­mit­tee who will assess its effect­ive­ness as a stand­ing item on their agenda.

   e) With ref­er­ence to the sum­mary table, where it details the Exec­ut­ive Man­age­ment respons­ib­il­ity for decisions to achieve estab­lished stra­tegic object­ives, what hap­pens if new stra­tegic object­ives come for­ward? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that any new policy object­ives are detailed in the same table as Board respons­ib­il­ity, as detailed on the left hand side of the table.

   f) What dif­fer­ence would hav­ing this state­ment in place make to the Board? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that so far the Author­ity had taken decisions without hav­ing a state­ment like this in place and while this had worked it was now felt that by the Board, per­haps reflect­ing mem­bers and staff turnover, that it would be help­ful to have some­thing in place that as clearly as pos­sible demon­strates where the decision mak­ing falls between Com­mit­tees, the Board and Seni­or Man­age­ment Team. It was hoped that hav­ing a writ­ten state­ment this would not act as an imped­i­ment to con­tin­ue achiev­ing the work of the Author­ity, which was recog­nised for its capa­city to dynam­ic­ally respond to oppor­tun­it­ies. He added that the doc­u­ment would help new staff and Board by inform­ing them of the decision mak­ing pro­cess in the Authority.

   g) Com­ment made by a mem­ber that they did not like the sum­mary table. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices accep­ted that it was dif­fi­cult to use the sum­mary table at the incep­tion of a new pro­cess such as this. How­ever, he felt it bet­ter to have clearly struc­tured table on one page that was eas­ily ref­er­enced so that the read­er could see at a glance where decision mak­ing might fall. He expec­ted that over time, and with use and know­ledge of the more detailed doc­u­ment, the sum­mary table would become a single page ref­er­ence which could help remind users of agreed approaches without need to ref­er­ence the detail.

   h) The Con­vener added that the pur­pose of the state­ment was to codi­fy the dif­fer­ent pro­cesses to provide clar­ity to Board mem­bers and staff and should not act an imped­i­ment. He wel­comed the sug­ges­tion of chan­ging the word­ing in the state­ment into plain English.

   i) Com­ment made that doc­u­ments such as this are use­ful, do bring clar­ity, is use­ful, and the doc­u­ment was an excel­lent start. It was sug­ges­ted that work is still to be done on the table to tie in and to ensure consistency:

   i.  Role of the Board 7. a) Comment made that it should be setting the aims and objectives in the first place, this also ties to 15 in the CEO section.
   
   ii. Also, under b). Agrees with taking steps to deal with changes as mentioned, but also identifying potential risks (horizon scanning)
   
   iii. Under c). – wording clarification sought; should it be promoting or is it assuring? With regards to the Board receiving management and assurance information.
   
   Director of Corporate Services indicated that he had made a note of the suggested points raised for review and would consider these in an update of the statement.
   

   j) Com­ment made that they wel­comed the state­ment and had found it really help­ful. It was import­ant use of the state­ment works for staff and board. He spoke about the 6 tests. He sug­ges­ted Para. 23 be re-worded to say ​“where the answer to One or more of these ques­tions is yes…” to provide clar­ity in order to pro­tect the exec­ut­ive team as much as any­thing else. He sug­ges­ted that there may be a role for the Con­vener and sug­ges­ted the form­al review in a year’s time should be built into the recom­mend­a­tions. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that he was happy to build in expli­cit ref­er­ence to the state­ment being reviewed in a year along with oth­er key gov­ernance doc­u­ments like the Terms of Ref­er­ence and the Annu­al Board For­ward Look. He added that he was happy to add more clar­ity as reques­ted. With regards to the sug­ges­tion around build­ing in the pro­cess of inform­al dis­cus­sions tak­ing place between the CEO and Con­vener, it was felt that there were enough con­trol struc­tures in there without codi­fy­ing and that in the doc­u­ment. The Con­vener added that fur­ther ele­ments of the assur­ance pro­cess was covered under the Stand­ing Orders and sug­ges­ted a link­ing sen­tence could be added which makes ref­er­ence to the Stand­ing Orders. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices agreed to do this.

   k) Com­ment made that the state­ment would be valu­able as often there were ques­tions arising wheth­er decisions should be taken by the Board or are more of an oper­a­tion­al mat­ter. Query raised around the dif­fer­ence between the two items on the sum­mary page, 3^rd box down ​‘decisions and invest­ments’? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that it linked to the ques­tions set out in para­graph 22 to help ana­lys­is of wheth­er a mat­ter is a stra­tegic or oper­a­tion­al mat­ter when look­ing at the decision. In this spe­cif­ic case, the con­sid­er­a­tion is around the like­li­hood that a decision point car­ries sig­ni­fic­ant repu­ta­tion­al risk with poten­tial adverse impact for the Author­ity. Where there is little like­li­hood of repu­ta­tion­al risk impact the mat­ter would not need Board attention.

   l) Judith Webb, Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair, said that she hoped hav­ing the state­ment in place would make a dif­fer­ence to Board and staff. She reminded mem­bers that from an Audit & Risk point of view the need for hav­ing a state­ment was iden­ti­fied as a recom­mend­a­tion from the intern­al audit report on gov­ernance. She explained that Aud­it­ors will also refer to the state­ment. She added that until it starts being used it would be dif­fi­cult to identi­fy which parts will need refined and that she wel­comed a review in a year’s time. She repor­ted that at the next meet­ing she has with the aud­it­or she will be able to report to them that the Board and officers have made sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress on this action. The Board Con­vener reaf­firmed that the need for this state­ment had come as a recom­mend­a­tion from the intern­al aud­it­or and the imple­ment­a­tion had been delayed as a res­ult of oth­er pres­sures of work includ­ing responses to Cov­id. The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair advised that the paper was inten­ded to be con­struct­ive in nature and that she would not want to see it stifling the Authority’s activ­it­ies. Hav­ing the state­ment in place provides a level of assur­ance that the Author­ity has the right pro­cesses and under­stand­ings in place.

   m) Car­o­lyn Cad­dick, Chair of Staff­ing & Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee explained that hav­ing the state­ment would be really help­ful for new Board Mem­bers so they under­stand what their job was when join­ing the Board. It was hoped that it would prove help­ful when there was a decision and who should make it.

   Suggestion made to make the suggested amendments raised and to circulate the revised version. Director of Corporate Services advised that he was happy to make the suggested amendments and put it in place rather than circulate it for comment thus delaying its adoption, while the Governance Committee could have a role in assurance, should that Committee be approved under the following agenda item, that amendments were as expected and monitoring its effectiveness following implementation.
   

   n) An Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee mem­ber explained that the draft state­ment had been thor­oughly dis­cussed by the Com­mit­tee and com­men­ded the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices for the work he had put into it. He com­men­ted that the prin­cipals laid out were sound and clear, warned that it was import­ant not to over codi­fy to allow for neces­sary mat­ters of judge­ment. He added that para­graph 23 was clear, if the answer to any of those ques­tions was yes that is what would trig­ger Board/​Board Com­mit­tee involve­ment in the decision making.

   o) Query around when, how and by whom will the usage of the state­ment be recor­ded? The Con­vener advised it was more of a guid­ance doc­u­ment. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the intent would not be to estab­lish any log of use, rather qual­it­at­ive feed­back would be gathered through the Seni­or Man­age­ment Team and staff groups on how much they have got from it and sim­il­arly expec­ted the Con­vener would receive feed­back through annu­al Board devel­op­ment con­ver­sa­tions to get a sense for how it was working.

3. The Con­vener pro­posed the motion which the Deputy Con­vener seconded which was to agree: a) the Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity Frame­work rep­res­ents an adequate doc­u­ment to guide the Authority’s gov­ernance and decision mak­ing processes;

   b) the draft Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment sub­ject to the fol­low­ing amendments:

   i. Para. 23 to be reviewed;
   ii. Set out a definition of key terms used in document;
   iii. Formal review after a year with the Board, ongoing review through relevant Committee structure;
   iv. Ensure the wording in summary table ties back to the text;
   v. Strategic aims and strategic risk wording to be reviewed;
   vi. Consider how we go about clarifying any budget and oversight roles;
   vii. Refer to Standing orders where appropriate.
   

4. The Con­vener thanked the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices for the tre­mend­ous amount of work he had put into this over the past 12 to 18 months.

5. Action Point Arising: i. Amend­ments to be made to the Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment pri­or to use and circulation.

Board Com­mit­tees: Terms Of Ref­er­ence (Paper 2)

1. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced Paper 2 which pro­poses the terms of ref­er­ence cov­er­ing the new Board Com­mit­tee arrange­ments approved in prin­ciple by mem­bers at the Board meet­ing of 12 Feb­ru­ary 2021. Не added that the Paper also sets out pro­pos­als for mov­ing for­ward with the revised arrange­ments for Board Com­mit­tees, should mem­bers agree to move for­ward with this revised Com­mit­tee structure.

2. The Board con­sidered the detail in the Paper and dis­cus­sions took place around the fol­low­ing: a) Com­ment made by a mem­ber that with regards to recom­mend­a­tion f, the meet­ing was not held in pub­lic and there­fore in that member’s view does not meet the test of the Stand­ing Orders as it does not com­ply with the notice required. Sug­ges­tion made to give noti­fic­a­tion now and run everything in par­al­lel. The Board Con­vener agreed with this sug­ges­tion and announced that the Stand­ing Orders would be form­ally changed fol­low­ing the next form­al meet­ing on 11^th June 2021.

   b) Query around the role of the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee: was its main lens to look at big pro­jects rather than have an over­view of all the stra­tegic object­ives? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that the focus on the deliv­ery of sig­ni­fic­ant pro­jects against agreed object­ives and mak­ing expec­ted con­tri­bu­tions to wider Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and oth­er strategy was cor­rect. Fur­ther query around the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee hav­ing the abil­ity to provide deep dives into oth­er areas? For example if the Com­mit­tee want dif­fer­ent report­ing, should it not be with­in the remit of this Com­mit­tee to request it? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that this would be pos­sible whilst being mind­ful of not over util­ising staff time: the intent is to use exist­ing pro­ject report­ing and not cre­ate sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of new report­ing or doc­u­ment­a­tion as an ele­ment of the Committee’s respons­ib­il­ity is to assess the adequacy of exist­ing pro­ject report­ing for assess­ing achieve­ment of objectives.

   c) With ref­er­ence to para­graph c under deploy­ment of resources spe­cific­ally around pro­ject ini­ti­ation pro­pos­als, should the Com­mit­tee not be look­ing at it through the life of the pro­ject? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices con­firmed that this was what was the inten­tion and agreed to adapt the wording.

   d) Query around the elec­tion of the Board Con­vener run­ning in par­al­lel, if someone did not get the Con­vener pos­i­tion they may want to run for a Com­mit­tee Chair, would they then miss that oppor­tun­ity? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that the only con­flict would be if the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair and the Board Con­vener were the same per­son. Oth­er­wise, mem­bers could seek elec­tion to role of Con­vener and the Com­mit­tee Chair roles should they wish.

   e) Would the above then impact on how Board Mem­bers would vote? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that it would be up to the indi­vidu­al Board Mem­bers when they have bal­lot papers in front of them to decide. He added that the first elec­tion res­ult will be to declare the Board Con­vener fol­lowed by the oth­er Com­mit­tee Chairs.

3. The Con­vener put for­ward a motion which was seconded by Judith Webb. They: a) Con­sidered the draft terms of ref­er­ence for Board Com­mit­tees presen­ted with this paper;

   b) Agreed any required amend­ments to the draft terms of reference;

   c) Agreed imple­ment­a­tion of the new Com­mit­tee struc­ture on the basis of these terms of ref­er­ence, includ­ing any agreed amendments

   d) Agreed the pro­cess of Com­mit­tee mem­ber­ship should begin with elec­tion of the Com­mit­tee Chairs

   e) Agreed the pro­cess and timetable for elec­tion of Com­mit­tee Chairs as set out in this paper

   f) Agreed to seek mem­bers’ pref­er­ences for Com­mit­tee mem­ber­ship in par­al­lel with the pro­cess for elec­tion of Com­mit­tee Chairs.

   g) Agreed to pro­ceed with the timetable pro­posed sub­ject to the Board form­ally agree­ing to the amend­ment to the Stand­ing Orders as set out in para­graph 10 on 11^th June 2021. This would then both meet the Stand­ing Order Require­ments and allow the elec­tion of Com­mit­tee Chairs to proceed.

4. Action Point Arising: i. Short paper to be brought before the Board on 11^th June 2021.

Board Con­vener Elec­tion (Paper 3)

1. The Con­vener handed over to the Deputy Con­vener to chair this item.

2. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices intro­duced Paper 3 which noti­fies the Board of the elec­tion of the Board Con­vener and the pro­posed pro­cess for that election.

3. The Deputy Con­vener moved the motion for the Board to note the noti­fic­a­tion of the elec­tion of the Board Con­vener and to agree the pro­cess of elec­tion as set out in the paper. This was seconded by Wil­li­am Munro.

4. Action Point Arising: None.

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Report to the Board (Paper 4)

1. The Deputy-Con­vener handed the meet­ing back to the Con­vener. Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, intro­duced Paper 4 which presents the report of the Audit & Risk Committee.

2. Judith Webb, Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair, thanked the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices for the pre­par­a­tion of the report and made the points: a) The Report had been approved by the Audit & Risk Committee.

   b) It was being presen­ted to the Board slightly later than usu­al giv­en under­stand­able work pres­sures on oth­er matters.

   c) Advance apo­lo­gies for the ​‘tech­nic­al’ audit related lan­guage and ter­min­o­logy used through­out but this was how it needed to be.

3. The Board made the fol­low­ing com­ments and obser­va­tions: a) The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair was praised by a fel­low mem­ber for the know­ledge and expert­ise she brings to the Committee.

   b) The Con­vener acknow­ledged the skill­set the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair brings to the Gov­ernance Group.

   c) With regards to the com­plaints hand­ling pro­cess (para 7k) a query around when was it car­ried out and what the res­ults were? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that a les­sons learned paper went before the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee on 12 Feb­ru­ary 2021 which was nor­mal prac­tice. The report iden­ti­fied amend­ments to be made to the Com­plaints hand­ling policy and the new Com­mit­tee Terms of Ref­er­ence just approved incor­por­ates an ele­ment of the updates agreed in terms of clar­ity of processes.

   d) The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair advised that from an Audit & Risk point of view com­plaints hand­ling is a com­plex pro­cess look­ing at the point of view of the repu­ta­tion of the Author­ity. The Con­vener added that the les­sons learned have been embed­ded fur­ther into the draft Terms of Ref­er­ence laid out today.

   e) A Mem­ber advised that she was not any clear­er what the les­son learned were? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices reit­er­ated that the paper was on the web­site and there­fore in the pub­lic domain, he agreed to cir­cu­late the link to the paper to the Board after the meet­ing rather than go into the detail at the meet­ing. He advised that any mem­bers were wel­come to con­tact him if they had any ques­tions on the paper.

   f) The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair reminded mem­bers that the Author­ity are not the sole people involved in the com­plaints pro­cess, the Eth­ic­al Stand­ards Com­mis­sion (ESC) are too.

   g) Has the com­plaints pro­cess update been dealt with? The Con­vener advised that the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee under del­eg­ated author­ity have to deal with this which they did through a les­sons learned paper. He explained that from that pro­cess the Com­mit­tee had iden­ti­fied amend­ments to the Com­plaints Hand­ling Pro­ced­ure to refine the process.

   h) Should there not be an extern­al body over­see­ing com­plaints, espe­cially if the com­plain­ant is intern­al? The Con­vener advised that there is an extern­al body known as the Eth­ic­al Stand­ards Com­mis­sion (ESC) how­ever what was being cap­tured here are com­plaints which may still be sub­mit­ted dir­ectly to the Author­ity. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices added that advice received and acted on is that the Authority’s own com­plaints hand­ling policy must incor­por­ate a means of hand­ling com­plaints sub­mit­ted about Board or Board mem­bers dir­ectly to the Author­ity. The onus is on the com­plain­ant to approach the ESC should they wish while they may opt to con­tact the Author­ity dir­ectly. Role for the Author­ity was to find a way to handle such com­plaints received. The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Chair explained that the Com­mit­tee deal with the intern­al mech­an­ism; and that an appro­pri­ate and pro­por­tion­ate mech­an­ism was required. For those com­plaints that might affect the repu­ta­tion of the Author­ity a clear­er pro­cess was required to determ­ine if they should be referred on by the Author­ity to the ESC.

   i) With a lot of sub­stan­tial busi­ness going through the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee, mem­ber sug­ges­ted Board mem­bers receive papers going to those meet­ings dir­ectly? The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices indic­ated there was an assump­tion that the Board memo which set out all meet­ings to mem­bers would trig­ger mem­bers look­ing at papers should they have an interest. Officers were cur­rently explor­ing an on line Board portal and the Dir­ect­or would con­sider any improve­ments with­in the use of that sys­tem which could be incor­por­ated to ensure that mem­bers were dir­ec­ted to avail­able papers.

   j) With ref­er­ence to Item J and Table I. I on the 9 recom­mend­a­tions, mem­bers remarked that there were more recom­mend­a­tions this year than in pre­vi­ous years and asked for an update on the work that had been done. The Chair of the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee provided assur­ance that items were being looked at by the Com­mit­tee and this year there had been oth­er pres­sures and impacts on con­trol sys­tems con­trib­ut­ing to the increase in the num­ber of recom­mend­a­tions raised by intern­al audit. She added that there is a pro­cess in place where with­in her role as Chair should there be inac­tion or insuf­fi­cient action she would share this with the Board Con­vener which could then be escal­ated to the Board. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices explained that the num­ber of recom­mend­a­tions had not come as a sur­prise giv­en the areas of work covered and the staff group dis­persed and home­work­ing which cre­ated a new range of intern­al con­trol considerations.

   k) He reminded the Board that dif­fer­ent audit firms have dif­fer­ent cat­egor­isa­tions of risks and this meant they needed to con­sider nuan­cing of import­ance and risk asso­ci­ated with recom­mend­a­tions between com­pan­ies. He provided reas­sur­ance that a full review of all out­stand­ing recom­mend­a­tions is car­ried out at least every year. With ref­er­ence to Para 7c) review of risk of Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­gram, might it be appro­pri­ate for the Board to rat­i­fy the decisions of the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee in the same way that the Budget is by the Board fol­low­ing the Fin­ance & Deliv­ery Com­mit­tee? Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices reminded the Board that the Her­it­age Hori­zon risk review had come to the Board in the first instance and then del­eg­ated by Board to the Audit & Risk Committee.

   l) Ques­tion around the com­plaints hand­ling policy not com­ing to the Board for final rat­i­fic­a­tion. The Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices advised that his expect­a­tion would be to draw up a revised pro­ced­ure which would be cir­cu­lated to the Board, Mem­bers could then provide elec­tron­ic feed­back for con­sid­er­a­tion and incorporation.

   m) The Chair of the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee reminded the Board that both intern­al and extern­al aud­it­ors sit on the Com­mit­tee and while Board Mem­bers make the decisions on pro­cesses they do take input form the aud­it­ors who have exper­i­ence bey­ond that of the Nation­al Park Authority.

   n) Com­ment made that they had not real­ized and were reas­sured that aud­it­ors were present and con­sul­ted upon at Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee meetings.

   o) Com­ment made that they wel­come the idea of a pre-fil­ter that cat­egor­ises complaints.

   p) Uneas­i­ness por­trayed at the of num­ber of audit find­ings that have been raised up to 2021 which was a sig­ni­fic­ant increase on pri­or report­ing peri­ods with many not hav­ing been fully resolved. Whilst they sup­port it, they would be look­ing for that fig­ure to decrease the next time around. Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices under­stood the con­cern and advised that while he was not con­tent with over­all num­ber of recom­mend­a­tions it had been an unusu­al 15 months of remote work­ing and the intern­al audit reports were in some cases recog­niz­ing addi­tion­al intern­al con­trol weak­nesses that had been cre­ated by that unusu­al mode of oper­a­tion. The Dir­ect­or con­firmed the intent would be to drive down the over­all num­ber. The Author­ity had a good his­tory of a rel­at­ively low num­ber of intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions and recog­nised that it would be of great­er con­cern should high­er num­bers of recom­mend­a­tions con­tin­ue year on year. The Dir­ect­or also reflec­ted on a need to be care­ful around an over-focus on num­bers of recom­mend­a­tions: intern­al audit was an import­ant means for the Author­ity to improve our intern­al sys­tems, and he would not wish staff teams to sug­gest areas of work for audit that would come out ​‘clean’ to min­im­ize num­bers of recom­mend­a­tions, rather than audit sys­tems which would more bene­fit from inde­pend­ent review.

4. The Board Con­vener moved the fol­low­ing motion which was seconded by Judith Webb: a) Con­sidered the Audit and Risk Committee’s report to the Board;

   b) Con­sidered any feed­back on the work of the Com­mit­tee to help shape the Committee’s work over the com­ing year.

5. Action Point Arising: i. Link to Com­plaints Hand­ling Policy review and les­sons learned paper for Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee meet­ing on 12 Feb­ru­ary 2021 to be cir­cu­lated to the Board for information.

AOCB

1. A Mem­ber sug­ges­ted that a warn­ing to the pub­lic around the increased num­ber of ticks and the impact of dogs off leads and sheep scar­ing. Board Con­vener noted these points and advised he would feed the back to the Com­mu­nic­a­tions team via the CEO.

2. Action Point Arising: i. Com­mu­nic­a­tions team to be advised to put out tick and sheep scar­ing warn­ings through the Authority’s social media channels.

Date of Next Meeting

1. Next form­al Board meet­ing to be held on 11 June 2021.

2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 16.22.