Council told to take proper control of its corporate safeguarding arrangements

The report, published on Monday, follows a review of the council between June and September this year and contains recommendations for improvement in key areas.

The council has pledged that the findings will be used to strengthen corporate safeguarding arrangements to ensure that residents are kept safe from harm and abuse.

It stressed today that Audit Wales had no concerns over the safeguarding arrangements that are in place in the county's education or social care settings.

The latest review found that the council had met or partially met some of the recommendations Audit Wales identified in reports it published in 2014 and 2015.

However, Audit Wales found that the council still does not have proper control of its corporate safeguarding arrangements, which exposes both the council and its residents to risk.

It has identified further recommendations to help the council urgently focus and strengthen its corporate safeguarding arrangements.

Councillor Richard Church, the council's cabinet member for a safer Powys and lead member for safeguarding, said: “We accept the findings of this review and I would like to thank the auditors for their work.

“Before we received the review findings, the council had already identified a number of actions to improve our corporate safeguarding arrangements. In the summer, we put an action plan in place to drive improvement and we have started to implement this plan, including approving a corporate safeguarding policy.

“We have reviewed and updated our action plan to ensure it fully addresses the recommendations outlined by Audit Wales to guarantee that we are on the right path to strengthening our corporate safeguarding arrangements.

“I want to reassure residents that Audit Wales had no concerns over the safeguarding arrangements that are in place in our education or social care settings.

“The recommendations focus on the whole council. Every member of staff and every councillor has a responsibility to ensure that people they deal with through their work is safe from harm and abuse, and that they know how to identify people who may be at risk and to alert the right people as quickly as possible.

“We are committed to meeting all of the recommendations and securing the improvements to ensure that the arrangements we have in place keep our residents safe from harm and abuse.”

The review found that the council was not able to demonstrate that it was acting in accordance with its commitment, nor assuring itself or its citizens that "safeguarding is everybody’s business in every service within the council".

The report said this exposed both the council and its residents to ongoing safeguarding risks.

The council does not have a corporate safeguarding policy and has never had such a policy, the report said.

It is also being recommended to review the need for having two disclosure and barring service policies.