Agenda item

To present the report of the Head of Audit and Risk.

The report of Head of Audit and Risk providing an update on the status and detail of the outstanding risks that Internal Audit has raised as at 27 January, 2019 was presented for the Committee’s consideration.

The Head of Audit and Risk reported that the graph at 3.4 of the report shows that the Council has been steadily improving is performance with regard to addressing issues and risks raised by Internal Audit with the overall implementation percentage at 93%.A slight dip in performance in addressing High/Red/Amber issues and risks from 93% in Quarter 3 to 87% in Quarter 4 to date is attributable to several issues/risks becoming due in December for the Learning Service which coincided with a change in staff responsible for updating the 4action system. As at 27 January, 2019, no High risks were outstanding; 7 Medium risks were outstanding and 12 Low risks and, from the previous audit system, 1 Red risk was outstanding, 18 Amber risks, 18 Yellow risks and 3 Green risks. Details of the outstanding risks/issues were provided in Appendix A to the report.

The Officer said that many of the recommendations that remain within the system were made under the previous Internal Audit administration and system and those may not be as relevant to the new system/approach. Heads of Service have been advised to postpone the requirement to keep recommendations updated until the new system is fully implemented pending the resolution of some software issues. Therefore, rather than undertaking a data cleansing exercise with regard to existing data, a decision has been taken with the Section 151 Officer’s approval to start anew. Issues and risks that have been raised since the new audit approach was introduced will be inputted into the new system. The Officer confirmed that the recommendations relating to the Child Care Court Orders under the Public Law Outline which are included in Appendix A have now all been addressed. It is anticipated that Internal Audit will be able to provide a report based on the new system to the Committee’s July meeting.

The Committee noted that an Amber risk in relation to Housing Rents – Readiness for Universal Credit remains outstanding and that the risk arises from the Housing Rents Orchard system not being up to date with the current recovery process. The Committee sought clarification of whether having identified the risk, steps are being taken to address the issues arising given that the longer they remain unactioned the greater the implications for the Council in terms of the income it should be collecting as part of rent arrears recovery.

The Head of Audit and Risk said that the Service would look at this particular issue as part of the current audit of Welfare Reform and that she would update the Committee at its next meeting.

It was resolved to note the Council’s progress in addressing the outstanding Internal Audit recommendations and issues/risks raised since April 2014 as reflected in the report and in the oral update provided by the Head of Audit and Risk.

NO ADDITIONAL ACTION WAS PROPOSED