Agenda item

A notice of motion had been submitted to the 15 September 2021 Council meeting by Councillor Gemmell proposing that all Risk Registers for the Council, all departments within the Council and in all associated bodies over which the Council had influence to be updated to include “climate risk” or “risk from climate change”.  Council had voted to refer the motion to the Audit and Governance Committee, as the relevant body that regularly monitored the Council’s risk registers and risk management activities.

The Committee received a report commissioned by the Head of Business Assurance to include the current recording and reporting of climate change risks across the council, benchmarking against other local authorities and recommendations for the future development of climate change risk management.

The Council maintained a Strategic Risk Register that was owned by the Corporate Management Team (CMT).  A risk relating to Climate Change was included in the Strategic Risk Register, with mitigating actions identified. The risk and related actions were reviewed and updated by CMT on a six-weekly basis and reported to the Risk Management Group as a standing agenda item.

A key mitigating action was the Council’s Climate Change and Air Quality Strategy which had recently been adopted by Cabinet and set out the approach to addressing climate change and air quality across Buckinghamshire, including targets for emissions reduction from the Council’s direct operations.

Each of the Council’s six directorates had established risk management process in place, with key service risks escalated to directorate leadership teams for consideration. At present the Resources directorate had identified two risks relating to climate change, and the Communities directorate had identified one risk relating to climate change.  Directorate and service risk registers tended to contain risks which may develop over the next couple of years, whereas the Strategic Risk Register detailed more long-term risks such as climate change.

Further information was provided in the report on risk management work undertaken by the Council across networking groups, including benchmarking with other authorities across the south east of England, as well as following guidance from professional bodies such as the Association of Local Authority Risk Management (ALARM).

The report stated that the Council recognized climate change as a significant risk, and it would continue to identify directorate related risks through the corporate risk management process.  The Corporate Risk Lead had identified a number of potential climate change risks by directorates going forward that could potentially be included in the strategic or directorate risk registers.  A description of these risks was included at paragraph 2.10 of the report.

Councillor Gemmell addressed the Committee and stressed the importance of the Council taking all possible actions it could to mitigate the impact of climate change, as detailed in his Notice of Motion.  Members sought additional information and were informed:

-                      that the Council benchmarked against the South East of England Risk Group which included London Boroughs, which quarterly compared strategic risk information.

-                      that the Council’s risk framework was currently being reviewed by CIPFA, which might identify areas for improvement.  Any actions would be reported back to the Risk Management Group and to the Audit and Governance Committee.

-                      that local authorities were awaiting for new procurement rules, which would include on climate change, following the UK leaving the European Union.

RESOLVED –

(1)               That the approach to Climate Change risks in the Council’s Risk Registers be agreed, as detailed in the Committee report.

(2)               That any actions or issues identified in the CIPFA review be reported to the Risk Management Group and the Audit and Governance Committee.