Welsh Revenue Authority Board minutes: 22 May 2024

Members

• Ruth Glazzard, Chair
• Dyfed Alsop, CEO
• Rebecca Godfrey, COO/SD
• Mary Champion, Non-Executive Member
• Jim Scopes, Non-Executive Member
• Rheon Tomos, Non-Executive Member
• Zoe Curry, Staff-Elected Member  

1. The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting. No conflicts of interest were declared.  Apologies were received from Jocelyn Davies and the board associates. Attendees included a representative from the Welsh Treasury (WT), and presenters and observers from the WRA.
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3. The minutes of the previous meeting (February 2024) were agreed as an accurate record of discussions. The minutes and redacted minutes were then agreed.

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Performance report

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CEO/ AO report

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2. The issue of physical office space in terms of increasing staff numbers was raised. The WRA are in discussions with Welsh Government regarding improving our accommodation space.
3. The hybrid working group was discussed and it was noted that most staff were content with the current flexibility arrangements, however, there is an increasing need to overlay business reasons for hybrid working.

Welsh Treasury report

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SDLG report

1. It was reported that multi factor authentication (MFA) had been fully rolled out under budget and on time. There had previously been some concern regarding how customers would react to MFA, however, these concerns did not materialise. It was noted that whilst “lessons learnt” exercises were helpful in respect of such projects, these documents should also be considered at the beginning of projects to inform the approach in future.
2. SDLG had undertaken a thorough process to establish their priorities for the year. Outside of visitor levy preparation and essential infrastructure work there will not be resource to work on much else other than one or two priorities. The Board acknowledged the need to prioritise, but questioned whether deferring some projects would lead to future risk. However, it was noted that the current priority list included all "must dos" and the WRA had purposely set some resource aside which allows some flexibility to deal with issues that arise in-year.
3. The SDLG priorities, alongside TA’s, will be shared as an intranet article to ensure staff are included on the journey of services and business priority group allocation.

Finance & ARAC report

1. It was acknowledged that medium-term financial planning required strengthening, as, whilst such planning took place, more work was needed in terms of continually updating plans so they could be provided more readily. The finance dashboard will be in Power BI so it can be accessed instantly with the information being available as at the end of the previous working day and ensuring wider access to the dashboard.
2. It was noted that whilst a detailed report on finance goes to each ARAC meeting, a shorter summary of bullet points was provided to the Board. It was important to ensure that the correct points were being raised each time.
3. It was positive that TA had mechanisms in place to identify issues around spending and resourcing more effectively.
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5. The ARAC report had been circulated and taken as read by members. It was felt that the ICQ had followed a thorough and thought-provoking process, overall performance was good, but some areas had been scored lower, but this had been expected due to high turnover of staff.

WRA stakeholders

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3. Alongside development of the corporate plan, it was also noted that over the next year the WRA will come under the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, Welsh Language Standards and we will be refreshing our Equalities Objectives. It will be important that our strategic objectives across each of these areas are complementary and interlinked.
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5. The next all staff away day was scheduled to take place in July and would have a strong focus on the next corporate plan and related strategic priorities. The team were collaboratively developing the agenda for the day, ensuring appropriate time and space to discuss the employee journey, future planning and reflection. The Board away day would follow.
6. The corporate plan was usually published in April or May. The wellbeing objectives, under the Future Generations Bill, would need to be published by the end of March 2025. Sufficient time for drafting, proofing and translation would need to be considered. It was important to note that the corporate plan would need to be high-level, as this work would cover the threshold of an election which could potentially change context and objectives.

1. Members provided reflections on the day’s discussions which had wide ranging risk considerations, including acceptable levels of cases, the impact of the nudge approach, and the increasing size of the organisation.
2. The WRA was engaging efficiently with stakeholders and would continue to plan to do so.
3. A flexible financial plan would be required to ensure priorities were met during a period of limited resources.
4. The next meetings would be ARAC and a Board Conversation on 19 June 2024. The Board’s summer strategy away day had been diarised for 16-17 July 2024.

Redacted information

There are certain circumstances where it is not appropriate to share all of the information contained within the Board minutes, for example, where it contains personal or commercial data or relates to the formulation of government policy or the effective conduct of public affairs. In such circumstances, the information has been redacted and the text is marked clearly that this has been the case.