Agenda item

To receive a report presenting an update of the work of the Internal Audit Service since the last meeting.

The Committee received a report (a copy of which is appended in the Minute Book) presenting an update of the work of the Internal Audit Service since the last meeting.

The Audit Manager – RSM set out the report, advising that there had been minor changes to the timings of some reviews in appendix B, but no audits had been cancelled or replaced. Training and the management support of the in-house team continued. Furthermore, he noted that the previous request of the Committee to include details of high priority actions had now been incorporated. It was key to note that with the exception of one of the reports, all had implementation dates between October and December so there were rigorous and tight dates agreed to get on top of some issues.

In response to questions from the Committee, the Audit Manager – RSM commented that officers agreed the actions and dates, but RSM would provide a challenge if a high priority action had an implementation date that was particularly far in the future. It was important to note that there were a significant number of audits, a significant number of actions and therefore a head of steam being built. In terms of whether target dates were realistic, the year-end will give a of whether these had been overly ambitious, and it would be clear during the next few Committee meetings whether those targets were on track.

The Chief Executive also commented that when officers were agreeing outcomes with auditors, it was a conversation rather than a date being imposed. Furthermore, it would have been remiss not to comment that LGR might affect capacity. However, through the work with RSM and through the training of managers, accountability was much more owned now than when she had first joined the Council when there was an enormous amount of non-complete actions.

The Committee noted that it was good to see the Scrutiny Panel’s insistence on getting involved in setting targets at an early stage recognised in the report. In terms of the discrepancies for two of the performance indicators in terms of data quality, there was nothing about going back to the Scrutiny Panel that looked at them to let them know there had been data quality issues in the indicators they had been scrutinising which it was felt pertinent. The Chief Executive commented that she would take that as an action herself to make sure that was fed back to the appropriate Scrutiny Panel.

The Committee were of the opinion that there had been a big step forward in the right direction recently and thanked the Audit Manager – RSM and the Corporate Director – Finance and Resources.

The Audit Manager – RSM advised the Committee that he had briefed the Executive Councillor – Governance and Democratic Services earlier in the year on the programme of work. There was also a direct line to the Chief Executive and to statutory officers for them to feed in, and the Committee had a key rule in ensuring the programme of work delivered against the plan the Committee approved, so there was a strong line of communication.

Whereupon, it was

RESOLVED

that the Committee commented on and noted the update on work undertaken by Internal Audit up to end of September 2025.