Bruce Robertson has some good feedback on Invercargill City Council’s Risk and Assurance Committee since stepping in to help deal with issues, such as the litigation over former Mayor – Sir Tim Shadbolt.
As independent chair of the committee, as well as many others around the country, Bruce gave a ‘self pass mark’ but said they could do better.
Regarding council’s recent internal audit he said he was “encouraged by its quality and the position we are in.”
However, chair of the Infrastructure Committee Ian Pottinger questioned why some of the big issues, including the Waste Management Compliance contract having 16 moderate risks, was only being brought up now in the Risk and Assurance Committee.
“Firstly Rangi, I’m not going to have a crack at solid waste,” Bruce replied.
Cr Pottinger (Rangi) also sits on the WasteNet committee, and Bruce agreed that the issues should’ve been brought up in the relevant committees before it came here.
Councillor Grant Dermody, chair of the Finance Committee also confirmed that issues were not always being reported back to them.
Bruce said that the Risk and Assurance Committee needed to work on its relationship to those other committees within the rest of council.
“How does it provide confidence to the rest of the governance groups that things are okay?”
After further discussion with council staff at the meeting, Bruce agreed they needed to have a better understanding of the processes in which those staff reports were cleared.
“We need to solve this reasonably quickly. I sense a wee bit of unease and we need to work on that.”
Bruce further reflected on his self-assessment report to council that outlined how far the ICC had come since the initial ‘Working on Working Together’ campaign began.
Sir Tim Shadbolt’s legal claim was one of the big risks the council had dealt with in recent years, and it was agreed the committee needed to sit down and discuss what they learned from that.
Going forward, the committee was moving back to being run on a more traditional model, which provides another level of security.
Bruce outlined three key areas that the Risk and Assurance Committee needed to work on, including how they deal with strategic risks and govern as a committee based on those risks; and how they assure the rest of council that they have things under control.
Setting aside specific time for the CEO Michael Day to have his say was also vital, Bruce said.