The ongoing Iran conflict should be added to Hertfordshire County Council's corporate risk register amid fears of "huge additional costs for fuel and food", councillors were told.

A meeting of Hertfordshire County Council's audit committee met on Friday, March 27, where the authority's Risk Management Update Report was analysed.

Cllr Richard Roberts (Conservative, Kings Langley) pointed out that the ongoing Iran war is not listed among the current risks, despite wide fears about its economic consequences.

Cllr Roberts said: "We have a second globally significant war going on at the moment, and the impact of that is starting to roll across our county, across our country.

"I don't know how long this is going to continue, and genuinely, I don't know what the impact will be on our references, but it's not good news.

"I don't mind how it is worded, but I think we should effectively have a view of the cost of living, because there could be a real challenge and that has all sorts of implications on the behaviours and needs of residents. I think that should be in there."

He was backed by an independent lay member of the committee, Richard Harbord, who told members he believed other local authorities had already added geopolitical events such as the Middle East conflict to their risk registers.

Mr Harbord said: "You see, local authorities set their budgets with an inflation figure of 3% or whatever, and that's all settled. We've had a settlement from the Government.

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"Now, whichever way you look at it, there's going to be huge additional costs for fuel and various things. Food, building materials are all going to go up. So it's a risk to the budget, which you've just passed.

"It looks like the risk is going to go on longer than the actual happenings at the moment, because it takes time for these things to calm down again and for inflation to stop.

"It is a particular instability and probably needs to be recognised somewhere in the risk register. At the end of the year, you'll need to be able to say, 'This cost us, you know, £20 million and we didn't know about it when we set our budget'.

"I think local authorities will probably wish to make some lobbying for assistance, but they will need to evaluate the risk and the costs of that risk."

Fiona Timms, risk and insurance manager, confirmed the council previously had a cost-of-living risk and officers would explore if this could be "resurrected" as an overarching corporate risk.

Steven Pilsworth, the council's director of finance, said: "I think we've probably got people in the room who remember four years ago, we council-approved the budget in February and then two days later, Putin invaded Ukraine.

"We saw the impact then in terms of fuel prices in particular, but actually on a range of commodities and what we needed to do within that year.

"We are already seeing in terms of global prices, the impact on fuel in particular, but also within the UK, seeing the impact on interest rates. Gilt yields are about 1% higher than they were at the end of February.

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"Clearly, we need to see how long that impact goes on, and I think we are all hoping to see things calm down and there will be some resolution to that… from a financial perspective, we will need to be looking at the impact on the budget that has been set and indeed we have a discussion at the senior management board on Tuesday.

"We have had some additional money from the Government to top up the Crisis Resilience Fund, and we need to see how we can target that."