Agenda item

Report by Chief Internal Auditor

This is the annual report of the Chief Internal Auditor, summarising the outcome of the Internal Audit work in 2024/25, and providing an opinion on the Council's System of Internal Control. The opinion is one of the sources of assurance for the Annual Governance Statement.

The basis for the opinion is set out in paragraphs 22 – 35, followed by the overall opinion for 2024/25 which is that there is satisfactory assurance regarding Oxfordshire County Council's overall control environment and the arrangements for governance, risk management and control.

The Audit and Governance Committee is RECOMMENDED to consider and endorse this annual report.

The Chief Internal Auditor introduced the report. She stressed that no limitations had been placed on the scope of the report. She also made the following remarks:

-       This report was an executive summary; any member could ask her for the full reports, and any aspect could be examined by the Audit Working Group (AWG).

-       There had been 30 audits undertaken throughout the year. Only 1 audit had been dropped because of resourcing issues, which she said was a credit to her team, especially the Principal Auditor and Audit Manager.

-       Those resourcing issues had had a 4–6-week impact on the production of the report; she would report back to the committee if there was subsequent impact to next year’s report.

-       Overall, she had no particular concerns in relation to the year’s audits or the implementation of management actions arising from them.

The Committee noted paragraph 23: ‘The Monitoring Officer conducted a survey of Senior Management on the effectiveness of Internal Audit in September 2023. The results from this survey were presented to [the committee in] November 2023.’ They asked officers if this survey was going to be repeated. Officers clarified that it used to be a requirement for one such survey to take place very year; that was no longer the case. However, officers said that they aimed to survey Senior Management every third year; as such, a survey was scheduled for June 2026; officers said that it could be brought forward upon request. The Chair said it was important for directors to be satisfied with the Council’s internal audit work.

The Committee discussed the team’s resourcing issues. They noted paragraph 40 regarding the negative impact those issued had had on the achievement of the service’s performance indicators. They asked officers how early in the process that was picked up and about the systems in place to allow the service to recover and deliver value for money. Officers stressed that where timeliness had slipped, quality had not. Nonetheless, they reiterated, the Annual Report had been delivered on time to the Committee. They agreed that they should further consider means to incentivise timeliness and penalise lack of timeliness to facilitate the audit process overall. The Committee also asked if the final audit, which had been dropped, was going to be undertaken in the future. Officers said that in their judgement they did not need to include it. They also said that their resourcing issues had been resolved.  Officers said that they had appointed another full-time principal auditor to start work in July, subject to pre-employment checks. The Chair took the opportunity to congratulate Georgina Queripel, Principal Auditor, for her recent promotion to Audit Manager.

The Committee also discussed the appendices to the report. In relation to Appendix 3, members asked if in future officers could make it clear which actions specifically were ‘not yet actioned’ and which ones were ‘not yet due’. Officers agreed to do so and to make clear whether the actions were Priority 1 or Priority 2. And in relation to the section ‘Schools Section 151 Assurance 24/25’, they discussed the importance of officers’ work around financial training for governors and business managers within the affected schools.

Finally, for new members of the Committee, officers clarified that analysis of the design and implementation of risk-management controls was in-built to the audit process. They also said that they monitored when dates moved and would report on that to the Committee in September 2025 and January 2026. They said that anything identified as red in the report would get called to the AWG and be reviewed in six months’ time

RESOLVED to endorse the Chief Internal Auditor's Annual Report.