Agenda item

Officers introduced the Internal Audit Progress Report.

Eight assurance reports were finalised during quarter 1: two substantial, four reasonable, and two limited. Following requests at the last Audit Committee meeting, a summary had been included for the two limited reports which were related to IR35 and Care Leavers allowances.

There were three reports in draft, and the report outlined the audit plan and the detail of those reports (Trading Standards POCA, Capital Programme, and Risk Management). There were no concerns about getting the draft reports finalised.

The forward plan of audits was a flexible plan and officers were already making changes. For example, the mortuary review had been brought forward; parking income had been moved back. A review had been added looking at budget monitoring alongside the savings programme audit. This demonstrated good engagement with different directors in terms of being flexible.

Ad hoc consultancy into Section 106 funding had taken place. The Internal Audit Annual Report, Audit Committee Annual Report and Risk Management Annual Report had been drafted, as well as the Annual Governance Statement for 2022/23.

Officers had continued to follow-up on older management actions and a summary was included within the report. This was a very high-level report due to the number of follow-up actions. More information would be included in future progress reports. Items were marked as overdue if officers had not received a response. Some of the overdue reports may have been due to officers changing roles, new appointments to services or service changes. There were no major concerns with any of these. The two oldest items were Corporate Payments and Community Safety.

There was a new Principal Internal Auditor within the Internal Audit team. A new tracker had been put together and new processes were in place within the newly expanded Internal Audit team to ensure escalation of any delays through to the Corporate Management Team. New actions from 2022-23 audits would be added to the tracker.

The External Quality Assessment that had been completed for the Internal Audit service was shared following the previous meeting and the actions from that report had been included in the progress report. All of the actions had now been completed. The Chairman noted that as the actions had now been completed, the Internal Audit team conformed with the standards.

The KPIs (key performance indicators) which were agreed as part of the annual plan and were all based on the 2023-24 work plan. The tracker was only introduced in May to monitor completion and so improvement was expected going forward.

Members asked how much involvement HR had had in the IR35 order, given that the Director of Procurement has taken ownership of it and contractors has been utilised. Officers noted that both Procurement and HR were involved in the audit, which was signed off by both together. One of the major findings was around who was going to take ownership and so HR were involved.

The Chairman commended officers for their recruitment to the team and asked for clarification on the current staff structure. There was the Head of Internal Audit; the Internal Audit Manager; Principal Internal Auditor; Senior Internal Auditor; three Internal Auditors and two apprentice Internal Auditors. The Chairman noted that the Committee were aware that staffing had been one of the biggest challenges for the Audit service over the last 18 months and it was commended that the service now had a fully populated audit team.

RESOLVED: That the Audit Committee noted the IA Progress Report for 2023/24 Quarter 1.