Agenda item

With reference to Article 4 of the minute of its meeting of 29 June 2016, the Council had before it a report by the Chief Executive which provided the findings following a review of the National Cremation Investigation report and advised of the actions that had been taken to date.

The report recommended:-

that the Council -

(a)          note and fully accept the findings of both the National Cremation Investigation led by Dame Elish Angiolini and the findings of the Infant Cremation Commission led by Lord Bonomy;

(b)          instruct the Chief Executive to continue to monitor the completion of the remaining actions to be undertaken by the Council, as well as the actions arising from the recent inspection undertaken by the Inspector of Crematoria Scotland and to provide further reports to the Council as necessary;

(c)          instruct the Chief Executive to constitute formally the inter-agency Bereavement Services Group with formal terms of reference and to assume the chairmanship of the group;

(d)          note the findings of the Inspector of Crematoria Scotland set out in his recent inspection report and note that future inspection reports will be submitted to the Communities, Housing and Infrastructure Committee and to note that any complaints being upheld by the Inspector of Crematoria Scotland will be reported to the Audit, Risk and Scrutiny Committee in the same way as complaints upheld by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman are reported;

(e)          in light of the legal framework being due to change considerably following the work of the Infant Cremation Commission, instruct the Chief Executive to arrange an elected members’ briefing on the statutory duties to be placed on the Council as a result of the Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016 (and any regulations made thereunder) once the said provisions are in force;

(f)           instruct the Chief Executive to develop an Assurance Map for the Council in order that a full understanding is developed as to which Council services are subject to independent external inspection;

(a)       On completion of the Assurance Map, instruct the Chief Internal Auditor to review it for omissions in assurance and determine how the Internal Audit Workplan could address the gaps;

(b)       Request the Audit, Risk and Scrutiny Committee to consider any proposed revision of the existing Internal Audit Workplan, following the Chief Internal Auditor’s review of the Assurance Map;

(c)       Instruct the Head of Public Infrastructure and Environment to develop a suite of compliance measures which should be routinely reported to both the Communities, Housing and Infrastructure Committee and the Corporate Health and Safety Committee to evidence continued compliance by the crematorium service, as well as providing a suite of performance measures evidencing comparison with external benchmarks where available; and

(d)       In order to ensure a more proactive assurance framework across the Council, instruct each Director to bring to the attention of the appropriate service committee any significant service failures from across Scotland and for each committee to instruct the Director regarding the level of testing of the relevant Aberdeen City Council systems they require;

(g)          note that at the instigation of the Chief Executive, a process is underway to consider how operational and strategic responsibility had been managed in relation to Aberdeen Crematorium and that she is considering what action, if any, should flow from this;

(h)         note the Chief Executive’s engagement with a number of affected families and to request the Chief Executive to continue to engage with affected families where requested, offering them as much support as possible;

(i)           note the Chief Executive’s engagement with faith and non-faith groups, bereavement charities and a number of families to determine the form of an appropriate memorial, accepting that the Council must never forget the pain and upset it has caused grieving families;

(j)            support the Chief Executive’s efforts to shape the culture of the organisation positively; and

(k)          note that the Chief Executive will share the report and the Council’s decisions in relation to it with the Scottish Government Minister for Public Health.

The Council was circulated with an appendix to the report which contained confidential information in terms of Section 50A 3(b) of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.

The Council resolved:-

to approve the recommendations.