Agenda item

Report of the Director of Finance.

The Committee received a report of the Director of Finance on the review of the Audit Committee undertaken as part of the 2018/19 Internal Audit Plan, a draft of which had been presented to the Committee in December 2018.  This further report was presented to allow Members to add detailed information into the action plan as it progressed. 

The Head of Internal Audit and Corporate Fraud introduced the report and referred to the proposed final version of the Audit Committee Review report and reminded Members that they had previously given agreement to all the recommendations at their meeting on 5 December 2018.  She added that Members had also indicated their desire to add more detail as the action plan progressed and that she had taken the opportunity to include appropriate detail regarding the progression of the agreed action for the Committee’s approval.

The Head of Internal Audit and Corporate Fraud also referred to the proposed report template for the Committee’s Annual Report to full Council and sought the Committee’s agreement to its use as a starting point for drafting the report.  The template had been based on the Committee’s revised Terms of Reference, as agreed by full Council on 28 February 2019, and from examples of similar reports used by other local authorities.

The Chair was of the view that flexibility ought to be retained in order to allow changes to be made to Committee’s response to the Internal Audit report and he suggested an amendment to recommendation 1, as set out in the Committee report.  Other Members agreed with this view.

A Member was concerned that corporate governance covered a wide array of issues and that the Committee might not be ‘qualified’ to deal with all aspects.  He referred to the need to upskill Members in this regard and cited the example of training offered to Members of the Pension Fund Committee prior to its meetings.  In response, the Head of Internal Audit and Corporate Fraud undertook to send examples of how other local authorities tackled governance issues in their annual reports.

The Chair agreed that the upskilling of Members was important and referred to paragraph 3.1 of the Action Plan which addressed this issue and noted that a further report setting out options would be submitted to the July 2019 meeting of the Committee.  In addition, the report would also include good practices such as consideration to appointing at least one independent member to the Committee with specialist expertise in the work of the Committee.

Prior to concluding business on this item, the Chair referred to the effectiveness of the Committee (paragraph 4 of the Action Plan referred) and how this issue could be addressed.  He referred to his recent discussions with the Council’s Chief Executive in this regard and highlighted the need to share experiences and seek feedback from various officers, external auditors and colleagues with a view to learning from each other.  

RESOLVED:  That, having reviewed the final Internal Audit report,

(1)          it be recognised that flexibility would be retained in order to allow changes to be made to the Committee’s response to the Internal Audit report;

(2)          the detailed responses to the individual recommendations set out in the report, including implementation dates, be agreed;

(3)               the proposed Annual Report template be used as a starting point for drafting an annual report.