Meeting documents

To consider Report No WSC 85/18 to be presented by Alastair Woodland, Audit Manager, South West Audit Partnership – SEE ATTACHED.

The purpose of the reportisto update members on the Internal Audit Plan 2018/19 progress and bring to their attention any significant findings identified through the work.

(ReportNo. WSC85/18, circulatedwith theAgenda).

The purpose of the report was to update the Committee on the Internal Audit Plan 2018-19 progress and bring to their attention any significant findings identified through the work.

The Audit Manager highlighted to the Committee a couple of changes to the Audit Plan:-

·         Due to the work already scheduled for Transformation, the review for the Strategic Framework had been dropped to supplement the time needed for the review on Redundancy Payments due to the significant value expected to be paid out; and

·         Homelessness Reduction had also been dropped to free up time to assist with the Service Mapping Activity.  The Service Mapping Activity aimed to ensure that the Council had the necessary knowledge/skills in place to deliver key services come 1 April 2019 due to the volume of staff who were due to leave.

Within the Transformation Update, Business Realisation Management and Business Process Re-engineering were highlighted and further information was reported to the Committee.

Duringthe discussionof thisitem thefollowing point wasmade:-

·         Members queried whether the work the Business Analysts had carried out had made a difference.

The audit had not been carried out on the quality of work, so the Audit Manager could not give assurance at this point.

·         Members queried now that there were twelve Business An analysts instead of six, had that impacted on the budget.

The budget had gone up because the business line had moved since the original business case was submitted.  There was a structure in place to ensure that the budget was kept to and the amount of analysts could be deemed as value for money.

·         Members queried whether there was assurance that money could be taken from budgets that had reserves.  Concern was raised as to whether the Council could afford the redundancy figure.

The audit work had not been carried out yet so assurance could not be given.

·         Members queried whether the Auditors were surprised to see an overspend on the redundancy package.

The Audit Manager advised that the original business case had been audited, however, the business case had now changed and due to the results of the recruitment process, there had been impacts on the redundancy figures.

·         Further concerns were raised on the redundancy process.  Members agreed that they were valid concerns, but suggested that this was not the right arena for the debate.

Within the audit work, they would check whether the redundancy process had been followed, however, phase two recruitment had not been completed so the final figures were not known.

·         Members queried what impact the loss of the ICT Audit Specialists had on the audit work for WSC.

There had been a delay in the work carried out on the Transformation ICT work, but the key risks were being checked.

·         Concern was raised on the loss of the ICT Audit Specialists and that the risks needed to be identified because ICT was important to the Council’s operations.

·         Members queried whether the auditors had looked at the ICT framework because there were several issues that needed to be addressed.

The Audit Manager confirmed that they had no power over internal controls and they could not sort out internal ICT problems.  They carried out risk assessments to ensure the processes worked as they should.

·         Concern was raised that ICT was a considerable risk and that the Internal Auditors were behind in their schedule of work.

Transformation was a massive project and the Internal Auditors could not check everything because there were not enough days allocated to carry out the audit work.

·         Members requested an update report on the audit work in relation to the redundancy payments before the March 2019 Audit Committee.

The Audit Manager advised the work should be completed by the end of December and he would circulate an update to the Committee in January 2019.

·         Concern was raised on the interview process used within the Transformation Project and wanted to ensure that staff knowledge was retained and that the correct questions were asked.

The Audit Manager advised that they could check the process but could not sit in on the interviews.

RESOLVED that the Committee noted the progress made in delivery of the 2018-19 internal audit plan and the significant findings.