Agenda item

The attached report identified that the Internal Audit Section was making progress against the 2020/21 audit plan and internal performance indicators even though the agreed revised plan only took effect from October 2020 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 significantly impacted on Internal Audit and its ability to deliver the original full year plan.  Corporately the focus was on delivering essential front line services to deal with the pandemic.  The Internal Audit team supported the business grants process and undertook extensive counter fraud work whilst the majority of the regularity audits were put on hold for an interim period.

The original audit plan was based on 1208 audit days; the revised audit plan was based on 626 audit days.

The Chief Internal Auditor went through the appendices within the report for the Committee.

Discussions included the following:

• The Chair referred to the number of audit days carried out by staff in Paragraph 8; Audit Plan and the Impact of Covid-19. The Chair observed that if someone were to look at the figures coldly it would imply that during the 626 audit days, staff were not doing their work for 600 days, although as outlined in the report, staff were carrying out other duties.  The 1208 days related to a full year audit plan; the 626 days related to the revised plan, which was to be undertaken during Q3 &Q4 of the 2020/21.

The Chair was assured that this was in relation to many issues, including with working from home, research work and information gathering.  Audit were dealing with front line staff including social workers and the Audit team were respectful of that and gave staff space; making allowance for the circumstances surrounding Covid-19.  This meant that it had taken longer for the work to reach the Audit team in some areas but they were working their way through the plan. The Chair felt if the paper was read in isolation, it could give the impression that things were not as active as actually explained by the Chief Internal Auditor.  When reviewing the annual governance statement, the Committee could place reassurance on the fact that staff were doing proactive work which helped to control the environment.

• Councillor Jordan asked if the Audit Team were still down one member.  This was the case; however their work was being covered with external support.
• Councillor Lacey appreciated that the team were struggling with man-hours and asked if this had an impact on previous months work, would the team be able to catch up with any backlog.  The Chief Internal Auditor revised the plan in the first six months of the pandemic and reprioritised work, assessing the risk of audit and putting a plan in place going forward.  Work had to be re prioritised with less important jobs being put on hold.  In addition, Councillor Lacey asked had lessons been learned from the pandemic on how to deal with work and any challenges carried forward. It was agreed that there would be improvements and that access to information from service areas was progressing but could be improved.  In additional the team had struggled to receive information electronically as many services were still paper driven.  Everything operated by the Audit Team was digitised but not all services within the Council had gone down that route.

Agreed:

The report be noted by the Council’s Audit Committee.