Agenda item

This report provides Members with an update on the work, outputs, and performance of the Internal Audit Team for the period 1 September to 30 November 2024.

Discussion:

The Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud introduced the report which provided an update on the work of the Internal Audit Team. There had been limited progress in the period with 9% of planned work delivered and 20% underway. This was a result of resource issues, and the Committee were asked to consider amendments to the plan for the year.

The Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud highlighted an error in the report, the amendment removing the audit of Housing Rent recovery should refer to Pentagon Centre Management.

The final Audit opinion may be more limited in scope due to the loss of resource and its subsequent effect on the completion of the Audit plan. However, there remained enough data available for the Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud to reach an opinion.

Two actions with implementation dates over six months ago remained to be completed, the action related to ICT security and access controls was scheduled to considered by the Security and Information Governance Group (SIGG) before being implemented Council wide.

The following issues were discussed:

Completion of recommendations – it was asked whether the rate of 30% of recommendations not completed in the year was higher or lower than expected at this point in the year. The Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud explained the rate of actions completed fluctuated over the period, the figure represented a snapshot at the time of reporting and was not a cause for concern.

Staff leave audit – clarification was sought for the reason staff leave was proposed to be removed from the audit plan for the year and the scope of the proposed review. The Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud explained that the review would have focused on staff annual leave and there were changes in the system scheduled for the next financial year which would affect the controls. Therefore, it made sense to delay the audit until those new systems were in place.

Loss of resources – the Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud outlined the loss of resource for the year which was principally due to sickness being higher than expected and a vacancy which had arisen in the team. A secondment had been put in place, however, a member of the team would retire shortly, so a recruitment was scheduled to take place in February.

He added that the service planned for an average of six days sickness for the year per officer, which was based on national figures, though acknowledged, this may be out of date.

Risk Profile of audits – in response to a question regarding the risk profile of the remaining items in the current year’s plan, the Head of Internal Audit and Counter Fraud stated that the risk associated with items in the plan were reviewed and updated and the items it was proposed to remove were lower risk.

Decision:

a)              The Committee noted the outputs and performance against the Internal Audit Plans for Medway for the period 1 September to 30 November 2024 as detailed at Appendix 1.

b)              The Committee approved the revisions to the agreed internal audit plans for Q1-Q2 and Q3-Q4.