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 provided members with an update of work undertaken by Internal Audit in the three months since the November Audit Committee.  71% of the revised plan had been completed which was in Iine with previous delivery records and the team was on track to deliver a minimum of 90% of the revised annual plan by year end.

The Head of Policy and Governance informed the Committee that it had been a challenging year with reduced resources available and various recruitment drives having been unsuccessful which although it had impacted on their work, it had not impacted the core work undertaken to enable an opinion to be formed on the Council’s internal control environment.  He reported that a further recruitment drive was currently underway to hopefully increase capacity.

The Head of Policy and Governance reported that twelve final reports containing 86 recommendations had been issued in the period (set out at Paragraph 8.9 of the report) with the year-to-date position set out in Appendix A, Table 2.  He informed that Committee that seven draft reports were awaiting responses and would be reported in the next performance report.  The number of lower-level assurance levels was 44%, slightly higher than the previous year (41%). Two fundamental recommendations had been identified and these were set out in the confidential part of the Agenda.

The Head of Policy and Governance drew attention to the unsatisfactory and limited assurance opinions (set out at Appendix A, Table 3) and asked Members whether they wished to receive a further report on Much Wenlock Leisure Centre which had received unsatisfactory opinions on multiple occasions.

In response to a query, the Head of Policy and Governance explained where they were at with the recruitment exercise.  A further query was raised as to the plan for achieving the rest of the planned audit work (30%).  In response, the Internal Audit Manager assured the Committee that they were comfortable that they had sufficient resources in place to deliver the remainder of the plan by year end.

Concern was raised as to why the North West Relief Road audit was mentioned in Appendix 1 Table 2, but did not appear in the list of unsatisfactory assurance opinions listed in Appendix A Table 3, and was to be discussed in the exempt part of the meeting.  In response, the Executive Director of Resources (Section 151 Officer) explained the reasons for it being in the exempt part of the meeting, due to a number of elements that were unable to be discussed in public session.  Table 2 set out the number of recommendations for each audit which was public information but it did not disclose the issues as they would be picked up within the exempt session.  He assured the Committee that the Agenda was very clear that in the exempt session there were two reports around the North West Relief Road that would be discussed.

Councillor Evans felt that there could have been two reports, one in public and the other in private and he was unhappy that it had not been referred to in Table 3 explaining why it had received an unsatisfactory opinion.  He confirmed that he would be voting against this item due to the public interest in a particular subject which was not mentioned in it.

In response, the Internal Audit Manager explained that the process for why the particular subject was not included in the report was consistent with other reports that could not be listed publicly, and which related to commercial contracts and followed the Constitution.

A query was raised as to whether there was anything else that the audit team felt needed further consideration by the Committee.  In response it was confirmed that the Committee could consider areas that had previously been looked at if, for example, there was a new emerging issue that the Committee felt it wanted further assurance on.  The Internal Audit Manager reassured the meeting that follow up audits were always undertaken for any unsatisfactory opinions or fundamental recommendations, and these would be reported back to Committee. 

In response to a query about whether there were any fundamental recommendations that had not been implemented, the Internal Audit Manager confirmed that there were a few audits classed as ‘open’ whereby the implementation date had not passed but none that need to come to Committee.  However if they were not implemented by the time of the follow up audit they would be brought to the attention of the Audit Committee.

RESOLVED:

To note the performance of Internal Audit against the 2023/24 Audit Plan.

Councillor Roger Evans voted against this item.