The Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance presented the report.  He explained that at the last meeting of the Standard and Audit Committee on 29 February, the Committee requested that Internal Audit provide a list of “High” and “Medium” priority rated recommendations from Internal Audit’s 2020/21 audit reports so they could review the list and select a set of recommendations for follow up work by Internal Audit. The list is contained within appendix A of the report.

The Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance stated that it would likely take 10 full days (½ a day per action for the internal audit team member to follow up the management actions) and this will impact on the resources for the audit plan. The Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance informed the Committee that when the internal service migrated to a new system, the recommendations were lost and it is a resource demand to upload them again on the system and follow through on them.

At 19.09 Councillor Collins joined the meeting

The following key points were highlighted: -

-          The Chair noted that some of the recommendations were now 4 years old

-          Members queried if the Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance was of the view that any of the recommendations were high risk. He responded that if there was anything high risk, an audit on the current audit plan was likely to cover it and there was nothing that was jumping out to him that needed to be prioritised.

-          The Executive Director of Corporate Services and Monitoring Officer confirmed that a shortcut would be to go through SLT and seek an update on the management actions and that something is in place.

-          Members queried whether the Commissioners would be happy with this approach. The Executive Director of Corporate Services and Monitoring Officer confirmed he would discuss this with the Director of Finance and with Commissioners.

-          The Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance provided an update on the recruitment situation for the Internal Audit team. A number of audits have been substantially completed by Mazars. He confirmed that by July 2024 they should be in a good position to deliver on the audit plan and complete an opinion.

-          Members discussed project management and Internal Audits review of this.

-          Members queried the line of reporting if there is a problem and Internal Audit are denied access to the Council’s business even when they are overdue for an audit. The Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance responded that this would be shared with Directors, the Leader, the Deputy Leader, the Portfolio Holder, Shadow Portfolio Holder and the Chair of the Standards and Audit Committee. The Internal Audit progress report is also shared with all Standards and Audit Committee members.  The Executive Director of Corporate Services and Monitoring Officer confirmed if a service wasn’t allowing access to Internal Audit, Internal Audit would report to the Chief Finance Officer, the Monitoring Officer and the Chief of Staff who are known as the ‘golden triangle’. The Monitoring Officer has a statutory duty to ensure the Council acts lawfully. If one of these officers were implicated, Internal Audit could refer it to one of the other officers and bring it to the Standards and Audit Committee.

-          The Chair confirmed he would like the Project Management Control Framework management recommendation to be followed up by Internal Audit. The Committee discussed amending the report recommendation to include this. The Chair proposed alternative wording to the recommendation which was seconded by Councillor Raper. Councillor Collins stated that his preference was for the report to come back to the Committee once the full information had been provided. The Committee voted and Councillor Massey, Councillor Raper and Councillor Kent supported the revised wording of the recommendation as set out below. Councillor Collins and Councillor Thandi voted against this.

-          ACTION 1 - The Executive Director of Corporate Services and Monitoring Officer will discuss this with the Director of Finance and Commissioners if they are content for SLT to provide an update on the management actions for the Committee.

-          ACTION 2 - The Interim Head of Financial Assurance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Insurance revise the list of recommendations to include associated management actions.

RESOLVED:

1.1                    The Committee reviewed the list of 2020/21 recommendations at Appendix A and selected the Project Management Control Framework for Internal Audit to follow-up regarding the implementation status of the associated management actions.

1.2                    The Executive Director of Corporate Services and Monitoring Officer will check the other Internal Audit management actions with the Senior Leadership team and report back to the Committee.