Richmond Council's Change Programme, designed to address organisational challenges and better meet the needs of local communities, has been flagged for control weaknesses following an internal audit.
The Audit, Standards and Statutory Accounts Committee reviewed the Change Programme - Audit review report at their meeting on Tuesday, 01 July 2025, which revealed that 'Limited' assurance could be given on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the internal controls reviewed. The audit's findings are expected to be addressed with implementation dates for the recommendations varying from June 13, 2025, to November 30, 2025.
The Richmond and Wandsworth Better Service Partnership (BSP) launched the Change Programme in September 2023, allocating £9.293 million to tackle organisational challenges. Of this, £3 million was earmarked for Richmond and £6.293 million for Wandsworth.
The Change Programme is driven by three primary objectives:
- Delivering excellent services and achieving Councils' priorities
- Attracting and retaining a skilled workforce
- Ensuring sustained financial stability.
The audit identified key areas needing improvement:
- Change Programme communication: The audit noted that details on the Loop, the council's intranet, were out of date at the time of testing. While efforts are underway to improve communication, more needs to be done to ensure staff are well-informed. The next major communication is planned from the Chief Executive at the Senior Managers' Conference in July, where change and transformation will be discussed. Follow-up communications to all staff and an engagement plan involving senior leaders are expected to follow.
- Defining change programme activities: A clear definition of what constitutes 'change,' 'transformation,' or 'improvement' is lacking, potentially leading to projects that do not align with the programme's objectives being accepted for funding. It has been suggested that large improvement projects could be defined in terms of financial threshold, political sensitivity, and dependencies across other departments.
- Programme planning: While project planning documentation and funding bids were completed, the audit found a lack of detail on timelines, resource allocation, and milestones to support robust oversight and monitoring. To improve programme planning, project plans should include timelines linked to milestones, details of resource requirements, and resource availability.
- Benefit realisation: A review of Change Programme projects revealed complex benefits without a clear baseline, making it difficult to track and assess improvements. To address this, a programme benefits framework with a simplified set of expected benefits and consistent assumptions should be established. Business cases for projects should set out expected costs and benefits with clarity on timelines, resource allocation, and milestones, alongside benefits monitoring.
According to the Change Programme - Audit review report, the audit concluded that 'Limited' assurance could be given on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the internal controls reviewed.
The Agenda frontsheet Tuesday 01-Jul-2025 19.00 Audit Standards and Statutory Accounts Committee also included discussion of the council's governance arrangements, risk management strategy and annual governance statement. The significant governance issues to be detailed within the Annual Governance Statement are:
- Information and cyber security
- Knowledge management and agile working
- Contract management
- Major projects/project management
- Risk management
