Agenda item

The Committee considered a report which provided an update on the Business Assurance Strategy 2022/23, and included progress against the Internal Audit Plan. The 2022/23 Internal Audit Plan had been reviewed to identify the key audit activities to be delivered considering the priorities within the Directorates and working with consideration of the service reviews which were in progress.

The Committee was advised that the new team structure would be published in November and recruitment processes were underway. The Business Continuity Management function would become part of the structure, and an update on this area would be presented to Members in November.

During discussion, Members raised queries on SEND, overall project governance and lessons learnt from major projects. In terms of the SEND payment processes, the Committee was informed that this would be reported to both the Risk Management Group and to this Committee at a future meeting. This work was underway and recommendations were being formed as this was a significant risk area within Childrens Services. The Chief Auditor would be meeting with the new Corporate Director in the coming weeks to discuss risks in this area. There was also concern around whether it was the right approach to disaggregate the components of the emerging concerns from the Ofsted report and the payments process in respect of SEND. Members heard that by separating the processes, recommendations for improvements could be made more efficiently. For example, in reviewing the work of SEND co-ordinators on case files, and the path to management prior to reviewing the payments process meant that feedback could be given on those first stages at an earlier time. The Committee was advised that an assurance lead was being recruited who would review assurance mapping and assist with the overall assurance of particular services. There would be support provided from Price Waterhouse Coopers in setting up a wider assurance framework which would become a useful tool for the organisation and feed in to the Annual Governance Statement.

In respect of the findings coming out from the various large projects which had been looked at for business assurance purposes, the Committee was advised that lessons had been learnt and information was being shared. For example, the robustness of the waste contract following the waste collection issues in the south of the county was taken in to consideration when developing the new highways contract. The SEALR project was also highlighted as a project where learnings had fed in to a larger governance piece of work to ensure that similar issues did not occur in other projects. Where issues were identified in schools, these were shared through schools’ web and bursar briefings to educate others.

It was queried whether staff required further training on the wider impact of their work and its effect on end to end processes. The Committee heard that a number of services had process maps in place for everyone to understand the role they played, although this was not consistent across the Council. This had been addressed in part by the service improvement team who reviewed processes during service reviews and this issue would link in with the work due to take place to look at the Better Buckinghamshire programme and whether processes were working, were more efficient and realised savings.

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.