The report of the Head of Policy and Governance is attached.

Contact: Barry Hanson 07990 086409

The Committee received the report of the Head of Policy and Governance - copy attached to the signed Minutes – which summarised the work of Internal Audit in the final quarter of 2022/23 to inform the year end opinion.

The Internal Audit Manager informed the Committee that 94% of the revised plan had been completed which was slightly below the previous year (97%).  Three good, six reasonable, five limited and two unsatisfactory assurance opinions had been issued, and of the 126 recommendations made in the 16 final reports, five were fundamental.  She reported that there were two outstanding audits at year end but had been assured by the external contractors that the work would commence imminently.

In response to a query, it was requested that the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) audit report be referred to the appropriate Scrutiny Committee.

          In response to a query the Internal Audit Manager confirmed that there were still vacancies within the audit team but they were currently being recruited to with a closing date at the end of July but they would look to employ external contractors to fill any gaps. 

          In response to a further query, she drew attention to table 7 on page 39 of the report which set out the process for following up recommendations.  She explained that any ‘requires attention’ or ‘best practice’ recommendations were left with management to address whereas any ‘significant’ or ‘fundamental’ recommendations were reported to the relevant Director for that service area when they became due.  In addition, internal audit would do follow-up testing on any fundamental recommendations to confirm there was evidence that they had been implemented whilst any unsatisfactory audit opinion would have a follow-up audit the following year to test that those recommendations had been implemented as agreed.

          In response to a query in relation to the refresh of Backup Arrangements which had been due for completion in June, the Head of Policy and Governance gave an update.  He reported that the new back up solution had been procured and was now in place and operative however no audit testing had yet taken place since that audit report had been completed and finalised.

          In response to concerns around Tree Safety, which had received a fundamental recommendation along with an unsatisfactory audit opinion, the Team Manager, Natural and Historic Environment was invited into the meeting to give an update on how the service was progressing with addressing the unsatisfactory audit. It was also recognised that trees were a vital resource in the fight against climate change and that a cohesive policy was needed to ensure that trees were managed to the best of our ability. 

          The Team Manager, Natural and Historic Environment explained that the focus of the audit report was around tree safety issues and he gave an overview of the structure of the tree team, for which he was service manager; there was a team leader who was a county arboriculturist who had two full-time equivalent technicians who dealt with enquiries coming into the team; there were four full-time arboricultural officers, two who dealt with tree safety matters and two who dealt with issues on the county’s highways network plus two officers who deal with other aspects of the estate eg school safety inspections etc and 2.5 full-time equivalent Tree and Amenity protection officers who provide advice in relation to planning issues.  They also had a Trees outside woodlands officer, which was a DEFRA funded post which had been extended up until 2025 and was looking for opportunities for planting trees outside of woodlands, primarily focussed on orchard type planting on farmland.  He informed the Committee that they were about to go out to recruit to another externally funded post (woodland accelerator fund) again looking for opportunities for woodland planting across the county primarily in relation to mitigating climate change.

          In relation to the audit report, they had an action plan in place, one item of which was an updated Tree Safety Policy and they were working their way through that, one of the issues being capacity for highways officers to undertake an element of the inspections regime and it was hoped to take a report on that to Cabinet later in the year.  The Team Manager reported that there were a number of other pieces of work ongoing including looking at the software systems used, whether it was fit for purpose and would give an audit trail across the authority in terms of following through actioning of the tree team’s recommendations.

RESOLVED:

1.    To note the performance of Internal Audit against the 2022/23 Plan.

2.     To refer the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) audit report to the appropriate Scrutiny Committee.

3.     To note the content of the verbal update on Tree Safety.