Issue - meetings

To receive a report from South West Audit Partnership (SWAP).

The committee received the South West Audit Partnership (SWAP) report of Internal Audit activity plan progress report for the 2019/20 year.  The plan progress reports provided an ongoing opinion to support the end of year annual opinion and also provided details of any significant risks that had been identified, along with the progress of mitigating previously identified significant risks by audit.  It was reported that the ongoing audit opinion remained as reasonable.  A number of partial opinions had been issued and detail was provided within the report.  It was also noted that a number of high priority recommendations had yet to be implemented and that the Service Manager for Assurance would be developing a dashboard to enable directorates to monitor the position of recommendations, which it was hoped would improve the position.

Councillors considered the issues arising from the report and during discussion the following points were raised:

·                A discussion was held with regard to Homes Dorset Ltd and the recent review of the associated governance arrangements.  Points were raised with regard to finances and the directors that were currently appointed.  It was noted that the governance arrangements required strengthening and finances set aside were still available.  A business case would need to be developed if the company model was to be retained

·                In response to a question with regard to checks in place for duplicate payments, it was reported by the Corporate Director for Finance and Commercial that the council had a proportionate approach which was supported by SWAP’s use of computerised software to identify potential duplicate payments.  There had been staffing vacancies within the team and it was hoped to improve the recovery process as the tranche 2 transitional structure process concluded

·                A discussion was held in respect of progress with policy convergence and the Corporate Director, Legal and Democratic provided a brief overview.  A request was made for a progress report on this area to be provided to the meeting of the committee in March 2020

·                The issue of external audit fees was raised and it was noted that fees had been negotiated.  The issue of pace of work had been picked up and it was noted that the council had opted for a higher fee in order to ensure a resourced and timely external audit process.