To update members on the progress of internal audit work and to bring to their attention any key internal control issues arising from work recently completed.

The progress report on the 2018/19 internal audit plan was presented and the following was highlighted:

·         Six audits had been completed.

·         Five audits were in draft. 

·         Two audits had partial assurance and there were priority 2 recommendations, both of which related to the ICT audits.

·         There had been two changes to the internal audit plan since the last meeting which were the addition of the further review on the recommendations of Blueschool House and a review of the Section 20 order process which had been requested by Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee.   Both these audits would be reported to the March committee.   

·         In order to accommodate the two additional audits, two audits had been deferred to 2019/20, quarter 1, which were property maintenance (schools) and children’s centres. 

·         Since the publication of the agenda for the meeting, 3 audits were in draft and 8 audits had been completed.   Details of these audits would be included in the progress report scheduled for January 2019.

·         Two audits had been deferred which were the corporate peer review and effectiveness of programme boards for major system change / projects.

Following a request from a member of the committee, the difference  between a follow up and a partial audit was explained.    If an audit has a partial finding, then there is a follow up audit to check that the priority findings are being actioned.   The actions from an internal audit report are tracked and reported to the committee every six months.   

With regard to the priority 2 findings on the ICT audits, the assistant director corporate support confirmed that progress was being made on the actions had now been completed.  

Members of the committee expressed concern over the project oversight on the Southern Link Road (SLR) and requested that this be added to the internal audit plan.   The chief finance officer explained that the budgets for capital projects were presented to council every year and that the current budget for the SLR is £35m.     The next report on capital projects was due to be presented to Council in February 2019.  As part of this report there will be a number of packages and there will be a greater level of detail.   

The 2010 detailed budget for the SLR which had been submitted to the recent planning inquiry was part of a large amount of data and documents which had been produced for the inquiry and there was a need to ensure that the figures were not taken out of context.   

The committee noted that whilst there was no evidence of something going wrong with the project, they required assurance that there was oversight on a major project and that there was no overspend.  The issue with Blueschool House had been that officers felt that the project was always going to spend more than authorised but because it was within the overall accommodation strategy they had the authority to proceed.  The committee wanted assurance that this would not happen in this case. 

A member of the committee suggested that the SLR could be looked at as an opportunity to check the progress of implementing of procedural changes for running projects and whether it was being managed in line with the programme.  

The chief finance officer indicated that he would need to discuss with SWAP if relevant as a large amount of information is in the public domain.      

The committee recommended that the SLR should as a matter of priority be examined in the context of the Blueschool House recommendations in time for the January report.

RESOLVED

That   

(a)        the report be noted; and

(b)       that the Southern Link Road project should as a matter of priority be examined in the context of the Blueschool House recommendation in time for the January report

At 16:54, the committee agreed to suspend standing orders and continue the meeting until 5:30 pm