That the restructure of services be approved, to consolidate them into a wider finance directorate, including the core operational finance teams (financial management and strategic and corporate finance), transactional finance teams (accounts payable and accounts receivable excluding revenues and benefits), a strengthened commercial services team and a new team that brings together financial governance, risk, insurance, internal audit and counter fraud and investigations and involving the following specific changes:
i. Increased internal capacity in the commercial services team to replace services provided by an external contractor;
ii.Increased internal capacity in the team covering internal audit to replace services provided by an external contractor;
iii.The transfer of the counter fraud and investigations team into a wider financial governance team;
iv.The transfer of the revenues, benefits and charges team into the finance department.
1. That the wide range of progress in 2021-22 as highlighted in Appendix 1 to the report and the proposed financial management objectives in 2022/23 be noted; and
2. That the report be recommended to Council.