Agenda item

The Committee received a Business Assurance Strategy update which contained the internal audit plan. The report provided an update on the internal audit work being undertaken by the Business Assurance Team against the 2023/24 plan. The 2023/24 Internal Audit Plan had been reviewed to identify the key audit activities to be delivered considering the priorities within the directorates and working around any key service priorities. Delivery of the overall Business Assurance work plans, including internal audit, helped ensure that there was an appropriate governance and control framework in place and that risk management was embedded across the Council to enable the achievement of set objectives. Ms Maggie Gibb, Chief Auditor and Head of Business Assurance presented the report.

During discussion, points raised included:

·       The Committee queried counter fraud cases and the number of cases brought forward for prosecution. Members were advised that a confidential paper containing statistics on fraud, including fraud cases for prosecution would be prepared for a future meeting. At the present time it was understood that there were cases listed for a court hearing.

·       It was confirmed that those audits rated red in the audit plan would be delivered and the resource was lined up to ensure that these were completed in the 2023/24 financial year.

·       A Member questioned the relevance of delaying the IT infrastructure resilience audit and the Committee was advised that the audit was been planned to commence in January 2024 to allow the IT team to implement a number of actions that came out of the recent desktop exercise, operation Skynet that had taken place and had assessed how robust the IT system and framework was and how the Council would cope with a complete loss of IT systems.

·       In relation to Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC), the Committee heard that the issue was brought to the attention of all local authorities in late 2021 and the council’s property services team undertook a lengthy structural audit of all the authority’s operational buildings, not limited to only schools. The audit was undertaken in two phases, firstly a desktop exercise to review all archive material for any evidence of RAAC, and a second phase which involved a discrete site visit to buildings where there was insufficient evidence to say RAAC was not present. Phase one involved over 700 buildings, with all but 43 ok, phase two involved visits to the 43 buildings, these were all found to be clear of RAAC in January 2023 with findings submitted for Bucks maintained schools to the DfE in February 2023. No RAAC was present in any operational buildings and as such the issue was not a risk on any of the council’s risk registers. The property services team were thanked for their swift action taken on the issue. A Member agreed to raise the issue with the Chairman of the Finance and Resources Select Committee to query whether the issue warranted an item or update at a future meeting of that Committee.

·       Further to the above, it was confirmed that as part of the scoping work for the audit in respect of property maintenance and reactive works, proactive work the service area undertook to identify potential issues across the council’s estate was factored in as was lessons learnt from issues such as RAC and asbestos. The audit opinion would then be formed on the processes in place.

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.