Issue - meetings

To consider a report summarising the results of internal audit work carried out in the year ended 31 March 2024.

The Committee received a report summarising the results of internal audit work undertaken in the twelve months ending 31 March 2024.

Paul Clarke, Internal Audit Manager, introduced the report and highlighted the change in assurance level compared to last year’s report, from substantial to moderate.  He reminded Members that the Council was operating in a different environment financially.

Paul Clarke advised that the annual report brought together a summary of last year’s work, based on the audit plan agreed at the start of the year.  The plan had been agreed following discussions with management and officers about the risks being identified, a review of the risk registers and gave an opinion on overall governance of risk management.

The report gave an independent view through a series of internal audit assurance pieces of work.  Paul Clarke explained that the Internal Audit team also provided advisory work in a number of areas including the implementation of new systems, certification work and grant claims submitted.  This helped to give a broad overview of the controls in place to oversee work taking place in the Council.  In addition, the report brought together opinions from recent inspections including Ofsted and HMICFRS.

In response to a query, Paul Clarke advised that ‘limited assurance’ would reflect a negative view of the control of an area, ‘moderate assurance’ implied that areas for improvement had been identified to management and ‘substantial’ assurance indicated that the area was performing well overall with strong controls.  However, recommendations could still be proposed.

The Committee were signposted to the comparative opinions from 2022/2023 and 2023/24 within the report and the differing proportions were discussed.  It was concluded that the changes illustrated the environment the Council were operating in, with difficult financial decisions having to be made.  The Annual Governance Statement had also reflected the difficulty in not only producing a balanced budget but maintaining it.  The trend in opinions from 2019 onwards was also illustrated on page 22 of the report and Members noted that this was often due to the different areas being audited year on year.

The Chair asked how officers could give assurance that they were being sufficiently critical and not influenced.  Paul Clarke explained that his team provided an independent opinion and worked to professional standards.  The auditors did not repeatedly work on the same areas to enable the relevant service to be viewed independently.  In addition, the recent external assessment of internal audit was very good.

In response to a query from Robert Zara relating to the chart on page 16, Paul Clarke advised that the data relating to opinions was not weighted by the individual service’s budget and was a snapshot of information at the time of auditing.

Councillor Ian Shenton noted that the audits undertaken each year differed, so caution was needed when interpreting the charts.  However, this led him to query if more detail should be requested.  Paul Clarke reiterated that the services audited covered a broad spectrum and gave assurance that actions were identified  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2