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 approved 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.

Since the last meeting, the business continuity function had moved to the resilience service. As a result, some responsibilities had been moved within the business assurance team, the assurance activity now came under the remit of the risk manager to align better and provide greater capacity for assurance work. The Risk Management function had focussed on assessing risks around major projects, ensuring there was greater visibility and consistency around how risks were identified and reported. Internal audit work was progressing well, the team was now fully resourced and quarters three and four were particularly busy for the team as the financial year end neared. A further update on audit activity would be provided at the next meeting of this Committee. Further, fraud statistics were contained in the report and further details and outcomes would be detailed in the annual fraud report which was due to be presented at an upcoming Committee meeting.

During discussion, points raised included:

·       Two deferrals were proposed as detailed in the report, these related to managing housing waiting lists and temporary accommodation. A Housing Improvement Board had recently been implemented, and it was proposed that the team would provide proactive assurance work to the area assessing the effectiveness of the board and then audit newly embedded control processes.

·       The Committee suggested that it would be beneficial to provide statistics around the increased number of audits and speed of completion now that the team was fully resourced. It was said that this would provide evidence to CMT of how having adequate resources enabled greater assurance across the authority.

ACTION: Ms M Gibb to provide further statistics around the work the team undertakes and include this in the papers for the March 2024 meeting when the Committee considers the summary of work delivered.

·       It was confirmed that an internal audit on parking services and parking enforcement was completed in the previous year, as there were Members who had very recently joined the Committee this could be shared separately.

ACTION: Ms M Gibb / Ms S Harlock to share the internal audit findings with Councillor S Wilson

·       There were efforts ongoing to make it clear how much money the authority recovered through counter fraud activity and to clearly demonstrate what was being brought back into the authority. Some areas were easier to demonstrate such as covid grants which were repaid, however proactive work to deter fraud would also be highlighted.

ACTION: Ms M Gibb to / Ms S Harlock to explore ways to demonstrate savings from counter fraud activity and where there was not a quantifiable saving outline the benefits of the proactive work undertaken.

·       It was confirmed that there was not a separate category for social services fraud, and it was contained within another sub-category. There were difficulties in presenting the information in a consolidated way, however when statistics were presented at year end there would be a greater breakdown provided which should help with transparency.

·       It was recognised that there was an increased number in internal audits which were rated high risk, and in previous years there had been lower to medium risk audits undertaken. It was explained that increasingly sophisticated methodologies were being used to analyse factors which meant more audits were deemed high risk. When the plan was next presented, further information around how the audits were rated would be provided. Further, there was confirmation that there would be a focus in the next year on audits within both adults and health and children’s services directorates respectively.

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.