Agenda item

To approve the Internal Audit Plan and resources for the forthcoming year.

Deborah Moss, Head of Internal Audit, presented the report.

Members asked the following questions:

·         Councillor Booth referred to the issue of resourcing, and he asked whether the recruitment exercise has commenced in order to fulfil the role of the full-time auditor who had decided to leave the authority. He asked whether consideration had been given to the use of agency personnel to fill the position as it is a specialised area and trying to fill that role, in his view, can be challenging. Deborah Moss explained that approval has been given to proceed with filling the post and initially it is hoped to find a permanent replacement by going out to market with an advert. She added that she is mindful that it may be a tall order to find a suitable candidate but to find a contractor is very costly and one of the Council’s objectives is to keep costs down. Deborah Moss added that there are also a couple of other internal options which may be considered. She explained that the job description is also being re written to make it more appealing to prospective candidates. Councillor Booth asked whether specialist recruitment agencies are being contacted who deal with risk and audit type roles as there are a number in existence that he has used himself previously both for recruitment and also to get contractors in to fill roles.

·         Councillor Christy stated that the new audit item which appears in the plan is with regards to the new Fenland Inspire projects and he asked what plans are in place to support the major project governance that is required on those projects where one has an excess of £40 million pound spend. Deborah Moss responded there will be a task to specifically review the internal controls and governance around those projects, with the Transformation Team having a project, deemed to be more of a checklist approach, designed in order that people follow the correct procurement in the first instance. She added that her service area is looking at the projects from a governance perspective with regards to the finance and ensuring that all stages are signed off correctly before that amount of money is spent.

·         Councillor Booth referred to the follow up process which is resource related, and asked, once there is notification received that an action has been delivered, what steps are taken from an audit perspective to satisfy that element of the audit has been completed and is any testing undertaken. Deborah Moss explained that the process in the past has been largely monitoring and asking officers what they have done but this time there will be follow ups where the report is listed as having limited assurance and the actions in there warrant a piece of follow up work. She added that the team will pick up the actions themselves which are coloured red, and they will be followed up as they are high priority or high risk. Deborah Moss explained that all of the actions will be monitored, she presents a report of all overdue actions to Management Team where they are asked to include their own updates for monitoring purposes and there is a database which contains all of the actions over the last three years. Councillor Booth explained that he has used a process himself where a sample of some of the actions is undertaken so that the area being audited does not know what aspects are going to be followed up on and that helps to make sure that the actions are delivered which have been committed to. Deborah Moss expressed the opinion that it is listening to what officers have said has been done and then when it is demonstrated that work has been undertaken it can be accepted, however, when it is something new that has been introduced that is where she would focus to see how that particular process or task operates rather than take it on face value.

·         Councillor Booth referred to the plan where it states key financial systems and fundamentals with a figure of 33 which he presumes is the number of days, however, it appears that the figures maybe incorrect. Deborah Moss stated that there is an error and she would amend that to reflect the plan accordingly. She explained that the difference has occurred because she added payroll as a fundamental audit as well as budgetary control.

·         Councillor Booth asked because of the change in the number of days does that now mean that more resource is needed? Deborah Moss stated that until the resource issue is rectified it is going to prove very difficult to estimate which audits are undertaken and it is likely that some of the fundamental audits may roll over into next year in favour of undertaking the audits in the high-risk areas like the Inspire Projects and cyber security.

·         Councillor Booth stated that he would like to see the committee being kept informed of the recruitment situation prior to the next committee meeting.

Members acknowledged the Internal Audit resources and noted the attached draft Internal Audit Plan for 2025/26.