The Council takes its role as a custodian of public money seriously. We have established sound governance arrangements to ensure that controls are in place to the prevent the inappropriate use of resources, and that employees, councillors and contractors act in accordance with the high value expectations that the council sets.
Our internal and external auditors provide additional checks and balances. In particular our external auditors ensure that the financial information we make available in our Financial Statements at the end of the year is a realistic representation of what we have spent public money on.
An ethical framework is in place at the Council, which builds upon the Council’s vision, values, objectives, and service delivery principles. It is delivered through policies, procedures and training. A key element of the ethical framework is the provision of avenues where stakeholders, such as service users and those contracting with the Council can raise any concerns they may have about the actions the Council undertakes.
- Customer comments or complaints about our services. Our customer service and complaints procedures ensure that the service users are empowered to feedback on their experiences of the Council – be it positive or negative.
- Allegations against councillors. These can be passed directly to our Monitoring Officer who will advise the Standards Committee.
- Employees have policies and procedures to deal with complaints and concerns, (for example our Grievance and Whistleblowing procedures). Employees of the Council should refer to the staff intranet or ask their manager or HR manager about these.
If you have a serious or sensitive concern about wrongdoing by the Council, its staff or suppliers which doesn’t fall within these categories, you can chose to raise these concerns through our Whistleblowing route.