Agenda item

Reporting Person: Councillor James Sanderson.

The Chairman introduced a formal proposal for the establishment of a scrutiny review of the Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) scheme, avoiding any overlap with the existing HIF Oversight Panel.  The focus of the proposed O&S review was intended to provide effective constructive critical friend challenge, focussing on:

o      the decisions the project was planning to make;

o      how these were planned to be implemented;

o      amplifying the voices and concerns of communities;

o      improving outcomes; and,

o      contributing to the development of a vision for the project and how this connected with related Council strategy and other change activity.

It was proposed that the review would initially be undertaken by Internal Audit and it was confirmed that the proposal would be presented to the Standards and Audit Committee at its meeting later in the week.  If supported, the report prepared by Internal Audit would be presented to a meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee with a view to:

o      provide assurance that all the risks in respect of the scheme had been identified and that there was sufficient mitigation in place to manage the risks;

o      provide assurance that due processes in decision making and project management had been applied and assess how the demands and potential conflicts of multiple major projects occurring concurrently were managed; and

o      identify the wider lessons from a project of this scale with very significant external dependencies.

An audit would be completed with the intention of reporting back to the Committee at its meeting on 22 November 2021.  It was noted that a separate report – Update on the HIF scheme – was scheduled for consideration by the Executive in October.

The Members of the Committee would subsequently propose how they would help to develop a vision for the project, setting out how it connected with related Council strategies and other change activities.

The Chairman stressed that, whilst the review would be forward looking, it would consider how the scheme had developed and how the decisions of the Council had been reached.  Councillor Kirby suggested that the review should include the timeline of all the meetings with any external bodies and the reasons why Members had made the decisions around the HIF scheme.  It was suggested the review should consider three elements of the scheme; economic, financial and democratic.

Some concern was expressed that the work would revisit and review the decisions of the Members at the time, rather than being a forward looking review.  The Chairman advised that an element of ‘looking back’ would be needed and that a timeline would be helpful.  The proposals had been drafted in such a way that the work would support that of the HIF Oversight Panel, rather than duplicate efforts.  It was made clear that, whilst the review would not look at how decisions had been made and why, there would be an element of background information to set the scene for the review. 

The wording of the form was discussed and Councillor Kirby suggested that greater prominence could be given to the inclusion in the scope of the work to look at the risks of the scheme and the mitigation identified.  It was therefore proposed that the paragraph on providing assurance that all risks had been identified should be moved to be included under the focus of the review.  The suggestion was agreed and it was

RESOLVED

That the proposed review of the Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) scheme be agreed, as amended in terms of the placement of the paragraph on the identification of risks.