Meeting documents

The Chairman paid tribute, and a minute silence was observed, to Mr Gerry Shanahan who had recently passed away.  Mr Shanahan had started work with AVDC in 1995 as a Refuse Loader and then later progressed to a Driver.  He had been promoted to Operations Supervisor until 2014 when he moved into the role he held to date as Charge Hand.

To approve as correct records the Minutes of the Annual and Ordinary meetings of the Council held on 16 May, 2018, copies attached as appendices.

RESOLVED –

That the Minutes of the Annual and Ordinary meetings of the Council held on 16 May, 2018, be approved as correct records.

Proposed by Councillor Monger, seconded by Councillor Cooper and

RESOLVED –

That Council Procedure Rules be waived to permit Members to speak twice on the item relating to Aylesbury Vale Broadband Review , subject to a time limit for each speech of 5 minutes.

Following a request from Councillors Christensen, Cooper, Mrs Harrison, Monger and Stuchbury, the Chairman of the Council has agreed in accordance with Council Procedure Rules that this extraordinary meeting should be held to consider the following:

"To debate the report into Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB) delivered to the Audit Committee of AVDC by Mr Leeder of BDO LLP and any properly submitted resolutions with regard to said report and its consequences."

A copy of the report into AVB that was finalised following the Audit Committee on 12 June 2018 is attached to this agenda.  Following consideration of the report the Audit Committee resolved the following:-

(1)          That it be accepted that the review had been performed in accordance with the Council Motion and had delivered against all the objectives set out in the agreed terms of reference.

(2)          That, having noted the caveats around warranties, the report be approved and its recommendations accepted and that their implementation be monitored through the Committee’s action tracking process.

(3)          That the recommendations identified in the report be reflected in the Council’s "Guide to the Creation and Working with Companies in which AVDC has an interest".

(4)          That the Council’s Code of Conduct be affirmed in relation to the divulgence of confidential papers and the Democratic Manager be instructed to take account of the AVB review recommendations in his review of the Councillors Code of Conduct, in particular the section relating to the divulgence of confidential papers."

(5)          That Cabinet be invited to endorse the recommendations of the Audit Committee.

This extraordinary meeting had been convened in accordance with Council Procedure Rules following a request from five Members of the Council (Councillors Christensen, Cooper, Mrs Harrison, Monger and Stuchbury) for consideration to be given to the following:-

"To debate the report into Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB) delivered to the Audit Committee of AVDC by Mr Leeder of BDO LLP and any properly submitted resolutions with regard to said report and its consequences."

A copy of the report into AVB that had been finalised following the Audit Committee meeting on 12 June 2018 was attached to the agenda.  The minutes of that meeting had subsequently been approved as a correct record by the Audit Committee on 26 June 2018.

The Chairman explained the process for dealing with this matter, and invited Councillor Monger to speak first on the issue.  Councillor Monger explained briefly the rationale behind the request for the extraordinary meeting, after which he proposed the following:-

"(1)      Council notes that, at its meeting on 12^th June 2018, the Audit Committee of AVDC accepted and agreed the twenty two recommendations of the BDO LLP review into AVB. Council endorses the decision and formally adopts the recommendations which are to be applied to all of its current and future commercial ventures.

(2)       In view of concerns about various aspects of financial matters reported in the BDO LLP report on the review of Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB) this Council, as 95% shareholder in AVB, calls for a forensic examination of the accounts of AVB to be carried out as a matter of urgency by a properly qualified independent body and a report on this to be delivered to the Audit Committee within 90 days.

(3)       Council notes and accepts that AVB failed to meet the objectives set out in either Business Plan 1 or 2 and that there was a failure of oversight by the board of AVB for which all directors were responsible.

The proposal was seconded by Councillor Cooper who then spoke.  The motion was then opened up to debate.

During debate, it was thereupon proposed by Councillor Mrs Harrison and duly seconded that the proposal be amended as follows:

·                    Part 1 of the proposal – additional sentence to be added at the end of the paragraph, "Further, a cross party group will be formed to oversee the implementation of the recommendations, the group to be appointed by the Audit Committee."

·                    Part 2 of the proposal – on line 3, the word "forensic" to be replaced with the word "detailed", on line 5 the words "a properly qualified independent body" to be replaced with the words "by AVDC’s internal audit team", and the words "within 90 days" be deleted.

With the agreement of Council, and following a brief discussion between Group Leaders, the mover and seconder of the original proposal agreed to incorporate the proposed amendment changes into their proposal.

The proposal as updated was then put to the meeting as the substantive proposal.  5 Members present requested a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.