Agenda item

To receive a report by Sally White Assistant Director SWAP

The Internal Audit Plan Progress 2022/23 report by the South West Audit Partnership (SWAP) was considered by the Committee setting out what progress had been made as well as the Audit Opinion; Significant Risks; Audit Follow Up Work; SWAP Internal Audit Plan Coverage; what SWAP Performance Measures were; and Limited Opinion Audits and their findings also being detailed

Members were advised of what constituted added value: particularly with regard to benchmarking – to determine how the Council was doing compared with other similar authorities for which SWAP had responsibility.

The Internal Audit Rolling Plan – and specifically the coverage and assurance tabulation - reflected the outcomes of recent reviews completed. Based on these reviews, SWAP recognised that, generally, risks were well managed, although some gaps, weaknesses and areas of non-compliance had been identified. However, SWAP had reasonable, to high, levels of confidence that the agreed actions would be implemented and, as such, was able to offer a reasonable opinion.

Since the last progress report in January 2022, three Limited assurance opinions had been issued on the areas and activities being audited, but none had been classified as a significant risk.

SWAP continued to have effective follow up of agreed audit actions being undertaken directly within directorates themselves, with actions being updated by directorate key contacts. As previously reported, there was still focus on a small number of long overdue actions to ensure these were updated and signed off as soon as possible, with officers committed to achieving this. However, whilst ‘less than significant’ issues did still remain, the prioritising of those more significant issues was achieving results. For clarity, SWAP confirmed the arrangements for how their audit programme was devised, what it was designed to do and what they were committed to look at.

Officers confirmed that they continued to pursue the recovery of debt, but that was being done more sympathetically given the current financial circumstances. However, the Authority had a commitment to doing all it could to achieve this.

One member asked if there was reason to believe the level of debt was because of errors with overcharging – as had been identified in other authorities – but officers were confident that there was no reason to believe that was the case. Finance officers – whilst dealing with the recovery of debt as effectively as they could - also had recently taken on additional commitments in terms of the Council Tax rebate and other duties associated with the pandemic. An assurance was provided that as the Council was returning to more familiar methods and processes to ensure the best outcomes were achieved. Levels of debt, and its recovery, were anticipated to return to levels seen prior to the pandemic.

Members were pleased to see that considerable progress had been made to address outstanding issues identified and hoped that this could be maintained so as to ensure those issues of consequence were all dealt with effectively. They recognised that there would be certain issues that were more of a challenge than others to address but had confidence in officers that this would be achieved over time. Never the less, they asked that they be provided with regular updates on debt recovery, what risks needed to be addressed and the progress being made.

Noted