Agenda item

To receive a report by Sally White, Assistant Director for SWAP.

The Principal Auditor SWAP Internal Auditor Services, Angie Hooper presented the SWAP Update Report for the 2024/25 financial year. SWAP offered a reasonable interim opinion and had not identified any significant corporate risks. Since the last update report there had been no limited assurance opinions reports issued. With regard to the actions to the response to the Climate Emergency Audit, SWAP continued to keep in contact with the Corporate Director, Transformation and Digital and his team and planned to undertake another formal follow-up in early 2025.  A follow up of premises health and safety audit had been undertaken and reported that 2 out of the 3 outstanding actions including the priority 1 action had now been implemented, with a revised implementation date for the remaining priority 2 action. SWAP believed that sufficient action had been taken by the service to mitigate the significant corporate risk so will no longer be formally reporting this to the Committee.  All priority 1’s and 2’s from all of SWAP’s audits would now be reported. 24 actions had passed their original due dates where a revised date had been agreed and 12 overdue actions where either the original date or revised date had passed. The number of overdue actions and revised timescales remained high, but SWAP was in contact with officers to ensure actions were implemented.

SR Comments: Pg 72 and 76- The revised dates for priority 2 actions seem mostly be in the region of 6 months to a year later than the original date.  Those extensions seem excessively large to me.

SR Questions: Pg 72 and 76- My contention is that if the priority 2 actions can be extended by many months and as much as a year, the owners cannot truly believe the risks are that significant.  Can SWAP please comment?  Have we got a mismatch (passively expressed by long implementation timelines) in assessment of the significance of the risks between SWAP and auditees/action owners? 

In response to questions, the Assistant Director for SWAP Internal Audit Services, Sally White informed that there had been a couple of Audits where the actions had been quite complex and had taken a bit longer to complete than previously anticipated. Additionally, there had been changes in structure and staffing that had potentially delayed the implementation. SWAP had continued to highlight their concerns around the speed of implementation, both at senior management level and at committee. However, only the service managers themselves would be able to explain in detail regarding why an action had been delayed. Senior Leadership Team had a performance indicator regarding overdue actions and asked for information where the date had been extended. She added that the committee might want to consider that they also have a role in questioning service managers where implementation of actions had been delayed.

The Executive Director for Corporate Development, Aidan Dunn responded to questions. He highlighted that there were some good points and the importance of accountability of officers. He added that some recommendations may at first appear simple to implement but as they progressed became more complex. This meant that the action date needed to be delayed but did not necessarily mean the action point was being ignored.