It was reported that, in accordance with the wishes of the Liberal Democrat Group, the membership of the Committee had been amended for this meeting by including Councillor Atiya-Alla instead of Councillor Howgate.

To consider a report that provides a high level view of the council’s progress and success in meeting the priorities of the Community and Corporate Plan as well as the council’s overall performance on key internal indicators.

At the meeting of the Audit Committee held on 23 November 2020 Members agreed to defer consideration of the Corporate Performance and Risk Report for Quarter 2 to enable them to speak directly to senior officers.  Members received and noted the submitted report and undertook a deep dive in respect of four key areas with a summary of their questioning set out below.

Corporate Services – Matt Fairclough-Kay Interim Director of Corporate Services responded to questions in relation to:

·         General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), our compliance, safety of data, associated risks and implications after 31 December 2020 when the UK leaves the EU;

·         Freedom of Information (FOI) and Subject Access Requests (SARs) and implications of not meeting statutory deadlines and the action being taken to address poor performance in this area, which included additional staff and increased staff training; and

·         complaints and requests for information and how this was measured and how this could be used to help inform the Community Engagement and Empowerment Strategy to get an understanding of the issues that matter to our residents.

Place – Kevin Mowat Director of Place responded to questions in relation to:

·         lack of actions for the last quarter to promote opportunities for investment through the Torbay Economic Growth Fund with the aim of regenerating our town centres and diversifying our economy and the adverse impact on new housing and employment growth.  Members were informed that the priority for employment space was to bring forward developments at Edginswell (funded by the Local Enterprise Partnership) and Lymington Road which would be coming to Cabinet soon as it required some match funding via a loan from the Economic Growth Fund, new housing would be delivered as part of the Town Deal for Torquay and the Future High Streets Fund for Paignton, if the Council was successful in obtaining this Government funding;

·         issues in connection with land supply numbers, the Local Plan and Neighbourhood Plans and the associated planning, employment and regeneration risks;

·         the lack of ambitious targets for climate change and how this could be addressed by the new Climate Change Officer and working with Devon and other regional and national authorities to develop meaningful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be easily benchmarked and monitored.  Ideas for potential future KPIs included a carbon assessment of all assets, increasing recycling, improving energy efficiency and use of sustainable energy such as solar farms for Council buildings and working to improve the energy efficiency of all housing in Torbay working with partners to access grant funding to retrofit existing housing stock and educating and incentivising our communities to be more energy efficient;

·         SWISCo and impact of missed collections, how these were managed and the action taken by staff and effect on other services such as grass cutting and street cleaning if staff were required to cover the waste and recycling collection.  Members also discussed the rationale behind the structure of SWISCo and the benefits of the transfer services such as highways and natural environment;

·         the impact  ...  view the full minutes text for item 222.