Ardenne District Council: A Register Full of Category Errors

Entry 1 - one unchanging score. The entry conflates inherent risk (before controls) with current risk (after controls), and it hides proximity. A score of 16 that has not moved while the programme slipped eleven weeks tells the committee nothing about whether controls are working or whether the event is now three weeks away rather than three months. The consequence is that a time-critical risk looks identical to a distant one, so scarce attention is misallocated.

Entry 2 - an issue masquerading as a risk. A caretaker who has already resigned is a fact. A risk is an uncertain future event that, if it occurs, will affect objectives. The consequence of recording issues as risks is that the register becomes a to-do list, the genuine uncertainties get crowded out, and the response column stops meaning 'what we will do if it happens' and starts meaning 'what we are already doing'.

Entry 3 - the opportunity excluded. The uncertainty about the extra £600k is the same phenomenon as a threat: an uncertain event with a positive effect. Excluding it means the council assesses only the downside of its partnerships and never plans to exploit upside. The practical consequence is that decision-makers see a distorted picture in which every uncertainty is a cost.

The common thread is that the register is being used to record and score, not to support decisions. Fixing labels first, before re-scoring, prevents the same errors being reproduced at a new scale.

Why 'zero' is untenable. Appetite is the amount of risk an organisation is willing to take to pursue its objectives; capacity is the amount it could bear before suffering unacceptable harm; tolerance is the operational threshold at which escalation is triggered. A council has statutory duties - school places, social care, waste collection. It cannot deliver these without taking risk, so a genuine zero appetite would mean ceasing to operate.

The real damage is behavioural. If the stated position is zero, then any recorded risk is evidence of failure, so the rational response for staff is to under-record. The register becomes a compliance artefact and the committee loses sight of the risks that matter. It also removes the basis for delegation: if no risk is acceptable, no officer can ever be authorised to accept one.

What a usable position contains. It should be expressed by category, not as a single word: for example, a stated willingness to accept higher financial risk on regeneration projects where the payback is measurable, and a very low tolerance for safeguarding or statutory-compliance failures. Each category needs a threshold - a financial figure, a maximum tolerable delay, a safety boundary - plus a named role empowered to accept risk up to that threshold and a rule for escalation beyond it. It should also state how the position is applied in practice, so a scheme sponsor can tell whether a proposal sits inside or outside it without asking the chief executive.

A short statement that nobody can apply is not a policy; it is a slogan.

What proportionality requires. Proportional effort means the rigour of identification, assessment, response planning and review should match the significance of the risk and the cost of managing it. It does not mean small risks are ignored; it means they are handled in a lighter, delegated way.

The proposal breaks proportionality in two directions, and both are worth naming to the director rather than simply rejecting the idea.

First, uniform monthly review of 84 items creates a fixed cost that does not vary with significance. If the committee has roughly two hours, that is under 90 seconds per item, which guarantees shallow review - exactly the failure mode that produces unchanged scores quarter after quarter. The high-consequence risks get the same treatment as a stationery contract.

Second, a single matrix applied to everything forces incommensurable things onto one scale. A safeguarding failure and a late fence repair can both score 12, but they are not equivalent, and treating them as equivalent is not fair - it is arbitrary.

A proportionate alternative. Differentiate tiers: a small number of top risks reviewed in depth each cycle with a standing agenda slot; the middle tier reviewed by exception, with the committee seeing only movement and overdue actions; the lower tier reviewed quarterly by the responsible manager and escalated only if the score crosses a defined threshold. The same matrix can be used across tiers for comparability, but the depth and frequency of review vary. Additionally, keep corporate and operational registers conceptually distinct, so operational detail does not bury the few uncertainties that genuinely threaten the council's objectives.