Agenda item - Chair's Communications

57.1    The Chair provided the following communications:

I have received apologies from Councillor Atkinson, who is unwell I understand. I’ve wished him a speedy recovery and of course we’ll miss his questions today. Since the last committee, members were invited to a training and engagement session organised by Internal Audit, which included discussing the draft Internal Audit Plan we have with us today. I was unfortunately unable to attend, but hopefully other members did and found that useful to informing the discussions today.

I’m pleased to say that since our last meeting in January, I have received my cochlear implant. I’m now getting used to my new hearing system. It’s a long period of personal adjustment and tuning by the audiologist. While I’m feeling confident that I’ll be able to hear you today, well I’ll find out in a minute, won’t I? And I’m beginning to be able to hear better than I was so I’m personally very pleased about that. When I was here last week I was having a bit of a struggle with the level of the induction loop. So I will try not to use that and I will see whether I can hear you through the sound system. So hopefully all will be well, but I know that you’re all very understanding of the challenges I face with my disability so just bear with me and we’ll see where we are thank you.

It’s a relatively short agenda today. We were hoping to take a couple of reports from the external auditor, but I understand these are now expected to go to our meeting in June. So that’s only another two months away, so we’ve got that to look forward to.