Agenda item

The Chief Internal Auditor presented this report to the committee.

Main points:

·       This reported related to the first 6 months of the year.

·       The report was in two parts in relation to the performance of the team and the opinions which were given to committee members to provide the assurance that there were adequate arrangements in place across all Council services in terms of internal control, governance, and risk management.

·       There were 8 staff members with 7 staff working at the moment supported by an external provider to help complete the plan.

·       Covid was still having an impact on audit delivery as site visits and school visits were on hold; discussions were being held with education management to revisit schools which would probably be in Quarter 4 of this financial year. This would be reported back to Committee in due course.

·       In terms of performance, the main indicators were that the team completed the agreed audit plan in accordance with the target. This was set out in paragraph 15 which showed that 30% of the plan was achieved as of the 30thof September.

·       Issuing of draft reports was 6 days against a target of 10 days and the issuing of finalisation reports was 4 days with a target of 5 days which was reassuring.

·       In terms of the outstanding reports that were in draft at the end of March 2021, 12 out of the 14 were finalised.

·       To give members reassurance the team were still promoting financial management across all service areas in the training they provided and raised awareness of the expectations of the financial regulation of the organisation.

·       There were 9 Audit opinions issued at the end of September: with 3 good, 6 reasonable and no unsatisfactory opinions.

·       There were 5 grant claim audits all of which were unqualified and compliant with the grant provider.

·       The team were also involved in the collation and publication of the Annual Governance Statement.

·       Members were referred to the appendices which set out a year-on-year comparison and a quarter-by-quarter comparison on the key performance indicators for information.

·       Audit work was limited as the team were occupied with counter fraud issues in relation to Welsh Government grants and TCP as a support, so the PI’s were not reported until 2021 and this would pick up in 2022.

·       30% completion of the plan was on track with the target of 30%.

·       Appendix D sets out some definitions of what audit opinions related to in terms of the level of assurance and what unqualified and qualified means in terms of the reports which the team were involved with.

The Chair asked whether the team were able to cover out the workload for the rest of the year and the Chief Internal Auditor confirmed that this would need to be reassessed as there was a long-term sickness in the team so management would be consulted in the next few weeks to see what could be achieved. This would be reported to Committee in January 2022.

Agreed:

The Governance and Audit Committee noted and endorsed the report.