Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning

To implement its mandate in terms of monitoring and support the Department of Local Government has put in place various IGR Platforms, to ensure the sharing of good practices amongst municipalities at a technical level.

The Department has further put in place institutional arrangements across all Provincial Sector Departments in terms of Monitoring, Support and building capacity, to ensure that support to local government is coordinated.

The Department of Local Government (DLG), Provincial Treasury (PT) and the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, together with municipalities are further committed to specifically focus on good governance within Western Cape Municipalities. The objective is to enable optimal good governance and service delivery to citizens through the continuous enhancement of governance practices, to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of services to citizens and compliance to laws and regulations.

Institutionalised governance engagements aim to proactively identify and respond to key financial governance and performance challenges and risks. A continued key focus is to monitor the matters arising from the municipal external audit process, the financial management capability maturity assessments and the in-year performance monitoring processes and current and emerging risks. 

The below municipal strategic engagements are focused on improving municipal planning, budgeting, governance and implementation.

During the Strategic Integrated Municipal Engagements (SIME) which focusses on the draft budgets currently prepared by municipalities, guidance is provided on financial modelling and budget preparations. Furthermore, most municipalities continue to comply with the legislative prescripts in terms of in-year reporting on budget implementation.

The Technical Integrated Municipal Engagements (TIME) focusses on the implementation of municipal strategic and operational plans and their alignment to good governance practices. It aims to proactively identify and address municipal governance and performance challenges to enable improved municipal performance and service delivery.

The Department is aware that there is continuous support to municipalities by PT specifically through in-year monitoring processes via the existing Intergovernmental Relations (IGR) structures e.g. various fora across the financial management discipline, capacitation and development initiatives and MFMA helpdesk. A critical area of focus is support provided to municipalities regarding effective Supply Chain Management within an everchanging environment of increasing regulatory compliance, which ensures procurement-enabled service delivery.

Optimising assurance and oversight is key to enable governance transformation to deliver citizen-centric services.  Governance, risk management and assurance are most effective when adopting a combined assurance approach. Provincial Treasury is focused on supporting municipalities in the effective implementation of Combined Assurance. This is achieved through the monitoring and support provided to municipal audit committees, municipal internal audit functions and systems of risk management.

The following specific support initiatives have been provided by Provincial Government to municipalities prior, during and post the municipal external audit process.

• DLG assists municipalities who require specific support to obtain such from mandated provincial sector departments (Section 154 or Operational Support Plans or ad hoc support)
• DLG provided training to Councillors to capacitate them on their roles and responsibilities contributing to the strengthening of governance within municipalities. This includes training to the MPAC committees ensuring that Council effectively exercise their oversight over administration.
• DLG conducts ICT assessments which has identified vulnerabilities in the ICT environment as well as assisting with matters ICT issues identified by the AGSA.
• PT hosts a Municipal Annual Financial Statement (AFS) Consistency Workshop. This workshop assists in achieving minimal material misstatements across the Western Cape municipalities using a consolidated analysis and drilling down to the root causes of the accounting complexities.  This is where PT in collaboration with various stakeholders such as National Treasury, SARS

and AGSA presents on certain accounting complexities based on its review of the draft AFS, prior year audit findings and a heat map analysis using its consolidated AFS database.

• PT’s review of municipal AFS prior to submission to the AGSA as well as after submission with the aim that municipalities may institute corrective measures of any findings by PT in the current or next financial year.
• PT attends municipal audit steering committee meetings when invited during the municipal audit to assist with real time access to municipal audit complexities.
• Hosting of the pthelpme@westerncape.gov.za helpdesk to deal with municipality daily issues as it relates to accounting, auditing and laws and regulatory matters.
• The analysis and distribution of redacted Consolidated Management Report Analysis to municipalities to assist in identifying transversal audit findings and new audit focus areas.
• PT provides onsite audit readiness engagements with municipalities to ensure optimal preparation for the annual audit.
• PT facilitates the adequacy evaluations of municipal audit action plans to enable the prompt resolution of all outstanding issues identified during the audit.
• PT conducts an annual GRAP update training forum to keep municipalities informed of latest developments in accounting frameworks and standards.