Issue - meetings

     I.        To note the internal audit progress report attached at annex 1;

    II.        That the Committee make any comments and/or observations on the report to the Council’s Chief Financial Officer.

Natalie Jerams, Deputy Head of Southern Internal Audit Partnership (SIAP), explained that the report had advanced since it had been circulated. At the point of writing the report there were still two audits that required scoping; however, these were both now underway. An overview of the performance dashboard was given.

The report provided an update on where the live audit reports were in terms of progress. It was noted that they either had management actions that had tipped into being overdue, or audits that were still showing as live. These would remain on the report until completion. There had been some revised target dates due to Covid-19 and SIAP would follow these through until completion. Reasons for any adjustments were shown within the report.

Planning Enforcement showed as having two overdue low priority actions, however these had since been completed.

Neil Pittman, Head of SIAP, thanked Officers for their assistance in getting to the current position. It was a challenging year and the cooperation received had enabled SIAP to produce its Annual Report.

Following a question from a Councillor it was explained that the audit opinion “reasonable” equated to the previous audit opinion of “adequate”. There had not been any significant areas of non-compliance, but there were some areas for improvement.

In respect of the audit of street cleansing and recycling there had been 15 actions raised of which 14 had been resolved (including the 3 high priority actions). Any further detail on this would need to be brought back to the Committee. Members also questioned IT disaster recovery and its testing, and it was stated that once this review had been undertaken, which would consider the arrangements for disaster recovery, the assurances around this would be provided to the Committee.

Natalie Jerams and Neil Pittman were thanked for their work. The Committee asked the Interim Head of Finance to thank all Officers involved in the internal audit process.

RESOLVED that:

(i)            the Committee notes the internal audit progress report attached at annex 1; and

(ii)          the Interim Head of Finance thanks Officers for ensuring the audits had been conducted.