ABSTRACT
In Birmingham City Council the separation of duties is achieved by the internal audit section being split into those who conduct the internal audits per se and a separate risk team who provide the broader support for the risk management system and its application across the different services in the council. In both Akzo Nobel and Tesco, simplification of the business model was an important aid to the introduction of enterprise risk management. It is the responsibility of the senior management team to identify new risks that may threaten the council and/or the city of Birmingham and ensure that the corporate risk register is up to date and complete. The public sector’s approach to managing cross-cutting risks may have useful lessons for the private sector, such as setting up a separate entity to control services and risks which straddle traditional organisational boundaries.
