Agenda item

This report presents the Audit & Counter Fraud Plan for Medway for 2018-19 for Members’ approval. 

Discussion:

Members considered a report regarding the Audit and Counter Fraud Plan for Medway for 2018-19.

Members discussed a range of issues, including the following:

Purchase cards – the Chief Finance Officer confirmed that purchase cards were being rolled out in a limited way amongst social care employees.

Car parking (pay by phone) – a Member asked if the audit review would look at whether motorists who used the app to pay for car parking were being charged at times when parking charges did not apply. The Chief Finance Officer replied that the way in which the app worked was a matter for the service to respond to but the audit would test how the system operated.

HR - recruitment (including Vetting) – in response to a question the Chief Finance Officer replied that the review was expected to include Ocelot, the Council’s staffing agency.

Governance of external bodies – a Member queried whether some of the time allocated for the review of Corporate Governance should be allocated to rviewing the governance of alternative models of service delivery such as Medway Norse and Medway Commercial Group.

Council Tax recovery – A Member referred to the review of arrangements to recover unpaid council tax liabilities and asked for clarification on a decision in recent years to account for significant legacy unpaid council tax. The Chief Finance Officer advised he was not aware of the specific case referred to but provision for bad debt was made each year so any write off of very old council tax debt would have happened through that mechanism. In response to a question about the Council Tax collection rate, the Council collected about 95.5 % in year with 98.5% of Council Tax collected over time. It was acknowledged performance in collecting debt across the Council could be improved.  A Member made the point that the in year rate was lower than in recent years and amounted to a significant loss of income of around £1.5m.

Car parking machines – A Member commented that anecdotal evidence suggested that car parking machines were still accepting old pound coins which were no longer legal tender. Other Members made the point that if this was an issue the extent of it would reduce over time and the cost effectiveness of converting machines was also questioned. The Chief Finance Officer undertook to raise this issue with the service. 

Resident parking permits – Members referred to recent evidence reported online of people trading in residents parking permits and queried why this had not been reported to the Audit Committee. Reference was also made to a recent statement from the Council’s Director of Regeneration, Culture, Environment and Transformation and Deputy Chief Executive that the Council had removed the annual visitor permits as they were open to abuse. A Member considered that this was mainly an issue around the hospital and it may have been more appropriate to deal with that locally rather than introduce a Medway wide solution. A Member queried what evidence there was for this decision and commented that if it was based on anecdotal evidence then that would be a concern.  The Chief Finance Officer stated that any formal investigations would have been carried out by the Audit and Counter Fraud Team and that he would take this issue up with the Director.

Transparency - A Member referred to CIPFA guidance on transparent decision making and made the point that a recent call in of a Cabinet decision had revealed an expectation from the public that the Council should go beyond what was required by the law in terms of transparency.

Decision:

The Committee agreed to approve the Audit and Counter Fraud Plan for Medway for 2018-19 presented at Appendix 1 to the report.