Agenda item

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

The report of the Head of Audit and Risk providing an update as at 3 September, 2023 on the audits completed since the previous update as at 31 March 2023 was presented for the Committee’s consideration. The report also set out the current workload of Internal Audit and its priorities for the short to medium term going forward. Members of the Committee were provided under separate cover with copies of the following six pieces of assurance work completed in the period in relation to IT Service Continuity – Phishing (Follow Up) (Reasonable Assurance); IT Software Licence Management (Follow Up) (Reasonable Assurance); Fuel Cards (Reasonable Assurance); Modernising Learning Communities Programme (Strategic Risk YM5) (Reasonable Assurance);  and Recovery of Council Tax, NNDR and Sundry Debs (Limited Assurance).

The Head of Audit and Risk provided an overview of the report and referred to a seventh piece of work which had been undertaken in the period in relation to the North Wales Regeneration Grant which as an investigative piece of work prompted by a referral from a member of the public, did not carry an assurance opinion. The report outlines the scope and outcome of the investigation. Regarding the Limited Assurance report in respect of the Recovery of Council Tax, NNDR and Sundry Debts, 8 issues /risks have been raised and an action plan agreed with management. Assurance has been provided that there are plans to address the issues/risks identified by January 2024. Internal Audit currently has in progress, 12 pieces of work as listed in the table at paragraph 35 of the report and is making good progress with the Annual Audit Strategy for 2023/24 along with the Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption Strategy for 2022-2025. A recent successful recruitment exercise means that the service is now only carrying one vacant post at Senior Auditor level due to a long-term secondment. The resulting budget savings are being used to commission additional external support.

The Director of Function (Resources)/Section 151 Officer set out the context to the Council’s approach to debt management and recovery highlighting that the covid pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis had exacerbated the situation and added to the debt burden and backlog. He described the processes available to the Council in seeking to recover Council Tax, NND and sundry debts and the limitations on those especially in the case of Council Tax where the sanction of imprisonment for non-payment has been removed or in cases of hardship or where vulnerable individuals are concerned such as with social care debts, the need to be sensitive in pursuing such cases.   The Revenue Team has been re-structured to clarify debt recovery responsibilities and a review of debt recovery processes has taken place to ascertain how the service can make more effective use of information in terms of extrapolating data from the system and in better establishing the status of debts so that dormant ageing debts which are unlikely to be recovered do not remain on the system for a length of time and can be written off. Bad debts are reviewed to assess whether circumstances have changed and the debt can be recovered and a bad debt provision is made for debts deemed as unrecoverable the arrangements for which were outlined to the Committee. The internal audit review has confirmed the position as regards the need to strengthen debt recovery processes and procedures and an action plan to that end has been formulated with some of the identified actions already being implemented.

The Head of Audit and Risk confirmed that a follow up review would take place in January, 2024 the outcome of which would be reported to this Committee.

It was resolved to note Internal Audit’s assurance provision and priorities going forward.