Our
Best City Ambition aims to tackle poverty and inequality and improve quality of life for everyone who calls Leeds home. Central to this, focus is placed on improving outcomes across the 3 Pillars of Health and Wellbeing, Inclusive Growth and Zero-Carbon. A risk is something that, if it occurred, could impact on our Best City Ambition and its outcomes.
Risk is present in everything we do to improve outcomes and deliver services. Local authorities, our communities and partners experience a wide range of significant risks that can be internal or external facing.
Internal risks relate to the council and cover areas such as finance, staff and business continuity.
External risks are those that could affect the city - its people, communities, businesses and infrastructure - where we have a role, often in partnership, to mitigate them.
It is essential that we understand, manage and communicate the range of risks that could threaten the city and the vital services provided by the council, so that we are better placed to prevent them from happening and to reduce the impact now and in the longer-term on communities, individuals, services, organisations and infrastructure.
We update the corporate risk register each quarter and then publish the Corporate Risk Map – a diagram that shows the various risks and their ratings based on a combined assessment of their probability (how likely the risk is to occur) and potential impact.
Read the corporate risk map
Click to enlarge image.
Corporate risk map
| Very high risks | Probability | Impact |
|---|
| Medium-term financial strategy | 4 (probable) | 5 (highly significant) |
| Community cohesion | 4 (probable) | 4 (major) |
| In-year budget | 4 (probable) | 4 (major) |
| Major cyber incident | 4 (probable) | 4 (major) |
| Escalating poverty | 4 (probable) | 4 (major) |
| Workforce planning | 4 (probable) | 4 (major) |
| Safeguarding children failure | 3 (possible) | 5 (highly significant) |
| Safeguarding adults failure | 3 (possible) | 5 (highly significant) |
| Major flooding | 3 (possible) | 5 (highly significant) |
| Major incident in Leeds (city resilience) | 3 (possible) | 5 (highly significant) |
| Climate change | 3 (possible) | 5 (highly significant) |
| High risks | Probability | Impact |
|---|
| Transport issues: Keeping the city moving | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Economic growth lag, increasing inequalities | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Care market sustainability/viability | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Infectious diseases | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Major disruption to council services (council resilience) | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Inspections: poor outcomes | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Health and Safety failure | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Major ICT failure | 3 (possible) | 3 (moderate) |
| SEND/EHCP pressures | 3 (possible) | 4 (major) |
| Information Management and Governance | 3 (possible) | 3 (moderate) |
| Third Sector Organisation sustainability | 3 (possible) | 3 (moderate) |
| Medium risks | Probability | Impact |
|---|
| Insufficient housing growth | 2 (unlikely) | 3 (moderate) |
We also produce a more detailed annual corporate risk report that provides assurance on how we and our partners are managing the key corporate risks.
Read the Annual Corporate Risk and Resilience Report.
West Yorkshire Prepared
West Yorkshire Prepared is the region's multi-agency partnership, which works to identify, plan, and prepare for major civil emergencies, to ensure the region is better prepared to cope with potential risks and able to recover following a major incident. Looking back on the 2023/24 municipal year, the
Annual report showcases the hard work and collaboration between multi-agency partners.
The report provides details on the numerous training exercises which have taken place to prepare partners for incidents requiring a multi-agency response, as well as responding to a number of real incidents, such as a 999 outage and an incident involving an unsafe structure.
