Agenda item

Report by the Director of Finance.

The report provides an update on the Internal Audit Service, including resources, completed and planned audits.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to note the progress with the 2022/23 Internal Audit Plan and the outcome of the completed audits.

Sarah Cox, Chief Internal Auditor, presented the quarterly progress report.  She stated that recruiting to fill the Senior Auditor post was still ongoing and agencies were continuing to be consulted on providing appropriate candidates.  To assist with Q4 in 2022, one of the Council’s ex-principal auditors had been recruited on a casual basis.  The Senior Auditor vacancy was having some impact on progress with the Internal Audit Plan.  There had been three additions to the Plan since the last update and five audits that had been removed or deferred until the 2023/2024 Plan.  This had happened largely because they needed to be delayed due to work currently ongoing within the services.  There was sufficient assurance across all the key risk areas and across the directorates in order that it was possible to provide the Annual Opinion.

Ms Cox added that many of the audits which had been undertaken from September to December were at draft stage or near to finalisation and the bulk of the work had been completed.  There had also been a commitment to reduce the residual management actions which had been open for some time.  There was now an 80% implementation rate and 10% of the actions were not yet due.  This high rate was a reflection of the work of the team and support from the Senior Leadership Team.

In response to questions, Ms Cox made the following points:

·       A risk relating to security alerts had been identified in the report as they were only received by one member of the IT team and, in their absence, this could lead to alerts not being received and acted upon on a timely basis.  The Committee were informed that IT had agreed to implement the required action in response to the risk being identified.  The overall opinion of the IT Virtual Infrastructure audit had been rated ‘green’.  There were therefore not significant concerns as it was a well managed area.

·       Work had been undertaken to provide some assurance that there had been improvement from a position that there had previously been contract spend without the formalised contracts in place.  Some improvement had been found, including that where contracts in the sample had been found not to be in place, this had already been identified by the service area with work underway with the Hub to formalise contract arrangements.  The procurement hub and the team were working with services to identify residual arrangements where contracts are needed.  The issues were generally related to lower level contracts rather than the major ones.  Improvement was required in relation to the contract management system.  The policies, procedures and guidance were found to be acceptable.  There was training in place and this was being targeted for the appropriate level of contract managers.

·       It was expected that there would be some resource to cover the Senior Auditor vacancy and that it would be sufficient to provide the Annual Opinion.  Some of the work going forward could be covered by casual staff or via an agency but this recruitment was cost dependent.

RESOLVED: That the Committee NOTED the progress with the 2022/23 Internal Audit Plan and the outcome of the completed audits.