Agenda item

Report DRR19/040

The Audit Sub-Committee met on 4^th June 2019 and considered the Audit report on Total Facilities Management. One of the recommendations had been accepted by management in principle, but without any action being proposed. Members expressed concern regarding this, and asked for the matter to be referred back to the ER&C PDS Committee for their attention and scrutiny.

The Head of Asset and Investment Management provided assurance that monitoring took place.  There were approximately 400 reactive maintenance tasks per month and Officers were confident that these tasks were monitored through self-reporting.  In addition to this, applications for payment submitted by Amey were scrutinised line by line.  There were very few occasions when the same issue was submitted a number of times as a result of slightly differing descriptions of the same fault.  However these were always picked up through scrutiny of the applications for payment.  It was also possible for the client team to audit the raising of faults and the resources being put into fixing faults.

Responding to a question from the Chairman concerning repeat faults, the Head of Asset and Investment confirmed that the Client Team put a lot of effort into analysing trends.  The majority of issues with repeat fault trends were the result of staff behaviours which had previously been discussed at Committee.

A Member who had attended the Audit Sub-Committee meeting confirmed that the Audit Team did not have a level of confidence about how the process worked and there were concerns that the system was not robust and relied too heavily on the meetings that took place with Amey on a Monday morning.  The Head of Asset and Investment confirmed that the audit had focused on the process for monitoring.  Amey operated a standard system for fault reporting and the internal checks that were in place were broadly in line with what would be expected.  The Client Team had also put in place other measures for checking and whilst there was always a small risk that something could be doubled charged it was difficult to see what more could be done without adding further resource.

The Committee noted that it was a small Client Team (of 3 members of staff) that undertook some checks around the Civic Centre site.  The Chairman indicated that this should have provided some assurance but it was suggested that it would be helpful to conduct more visible checks in the future.

A Member highlighted the significant amount of detailed scrutiny that the TFM Contract had been subjected to over the past year and suggested that this level of scrutiny should also be applied to contracts in other portfolios such as Adult Care and Health where there were similar serious concerns that required detailed consideration.

Noting that grounds of urgency had been applied in order to ensure that the issues were scrutinised at the earliest opportunity, the Chairman urged all PDS Committee to bring referrals from the Audit Committee forward straight away.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.