Agenda item

Risk As Included within the Register

Update / Comment

RISK 1b – Catastrophic IT network failure

Resilience is built into our IT Investment Strategies including ‘mirrored’ data storage at two national Microsoft Azure platform data centres delivering 85% of our hybrid Private/ Public Applications  - all resulting in significantly increased resilience and much speedier ‘disaster recovery’ capability.

RISK 1c-  Ineffective communication / management of information

Officers laptops have been upgraded during the last 6 months to ensure a smoother working from home process can be maintained.

A significant amount has been undertaken to facilitate remote meetings at both officer and member level. 

RISK 1d -   Ineffective Cyber Security Physical and Application (software) Based Protection Management

Nationally cyber security attacks have increased by 700% during the COVID 19 crisis. The IT remain alert to these attacks and continue to carry out work in this area including increasing staff awareness on these issues while working remotely.

RISK 3b - Failure to comply with legislative requirements

The Council has remained alert to new legislative requirements such as the changes associated with holding remote meetings etc. The necessary decision making processes and practical arrangements have been put in place where necessary.  

RISK 3d - Fraud and Corruption

During a major crisis such as COVID 19, there is unfortunately an increase in attempts to defraud organisations – this can range from organised and widespread ‘attacks’ to businesses wrongly claiming business rates grants. The Council has remained alert to such issues and where controls have had to be changed or implemented to accommodate new working practices (such as remote working), these changes have been made in consultation with Internal Audit and will form part of their follow up work later in the year.

A significant amount of assurance work has also been undertaken by the Revenues and Benefits Team in connection with the payment of various business grants to ensure money is paid out correctly to those eligible.

RISK 4a – Loss of Key Staff

RISK 4b – Lack of Capacity to Deliver Core Services

The Council remains alert to the pressures it currently faces, not only responding to COVID 19 issues which have been varied and challenging to resource over the past few months, but also to other emerging activities both locally and nationally.

Council staff have risen to the challenge in terms of being flexible, positive and willing to support different areas of the Council.

However with continuing changes in the Local Government sector, such as those  emerging from the Government, the level of capacity to not only deliver against these emerging issues but also the day to day operations of the Council may become more challenging over time.

RISK 5a - Financial Strategy

There has been a significant impact on business rates and council tax (Risks 8a and 8b) during the 6 month period to date, along with losses of income from areas such as parking and leisure. The Government have provided financial support to the Council to underwrite some risks and an updated in-year position will be reported to members later in October.

It is very difficult to predict the longer term impact on the Council’s financial strategy at the present time. However an underlying strength in the financial resilience of the Council is the flexibility that the long term approach provides, which will enable any adverse impact to be managed over a longer period of time.

Risks:

3c - Health and Safety;

9a -  Ineffective Emergency Planning; and

9b - Ineffective Business Continuity Planning

At the beginning of the crisis earlier in the year the Council invoked its emergency planning and business continuity processes. Usually this response would be over a very short period of time dealing with a one-off major event such as coastal flooding, so they have never been tested in a long term scenario such as COVID 19. However the plans that have been put in place have enabled the Council to maintain business as usual over a major part of its normal operations. Arrangements have also continued to evolve over the course of the year in delivering a successful response to the longer term nature of the COVID 19 crisis. There will inevitably be lessons learnt that need to be reflected in any necessary revisions to emergency planning and business continuity arrangements which will form part of future updates.  

Risk Register Item

Amendments / Comments

New Risks Identified

None

Risks Removed

None

Risk Scores Amended

None – however as mentioned elsewhere in the Officer report, the corporate risk register would be reviewed in the context of the COVID 19 crisis along with lessons learnt which would undoubtedly require changes to be reflected in the register going forward.

Risk under review

Risks Amended

Minor wording changes had been made for the following risks:

1b -  Catastrophic IT network failure

1c -  Ineffective communication/management of information

1d – Ineffective cyber security physical and application (software) based protection management

2d – Ineffective delivery of transforming Tendring project

6a – Loss of sensitive and/or personal data through malicious actions loss theft and/or hacking

9a - Ineffective Emergency Planning