Agenda item

Report of the Deputy Chief Executive (Place)

The Committee considered a report of the Deputy Chief Executive (Place) which summarised the Council’s Internal Audit activity for the period April 2017 to March 2018 against the agreed Audit Plan for 2017/18. The report also provided the Committee with the Acting Chief Internal Auditor’s opinion on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the Council’s internal control environment.

The key target for the Internal Audit and Risk Service was to complete 90% of its agreed work plan by the 31st March 2018 and the report indicated that this target was met.  In addition to the delivery of the Plan, the Service had a number of other key performance indicators (KPIs) which underpinned its delivery.  These KPIs were aimed at ensuring that the audit process was completed on a timely basis. The report provided details of the performance of Internal Audit against the KPIs for 2017/2018, compared with performance in 2016/17. Appendix One of the report detailed the audit reviews that had been carried out in the financial year 2017/2018, along with the level of assurance provided.  A summary of the findings of key audits were included at Appendix Two of the report. 

In the Acting Chief Internal Auditor’s view, sufficient assurance work had been carried out to allow her to form a reasonable conclusion on the adequacy and effectiveness of the Council’s internal control environment. It was the Acting Chief Internal Auditor’s opinion that that moderate assurance could be provided that there was generally a sound system of internal control in place designed to meet the Council's objectives. This meant that there was generally an appropriate level of control for managing the majority of the significant inherent risks to the Council’s objectives to a reasonable level.

In giving this opinion, the Committee acknowledged that assurance could never be absolute as the system of internal control was designed to manage risk to a reasonable level. It could not eliminate all risk and could therefore only provide reasonable and not absolute assurance of effectiveness.

In undertaking the assessment of the Council's internal control environment, the Acting Chief Internal Auditor had identified a number of areas that, in her opinion, needed to be considered when the Council produced its Annual Governance Statement for 2017-2018. These related to readiness for General Data Protection Regulations, Homelessness and the delivery of the IT Strategy.

The Committee asked a number of questions and received answers on areas of the report including:

·  That there has been an increase in the number of audits without assurance or with limited assurance – this was due, in part, to being asked to go into an area where the service knows there’s an issue.

·  How resources within the team were managed whilst it was not at full strength and how the restructure was progressing.

·  How work programmes had evolved – used to be a bigger team and do more work with schools, however, the pool of local authority schools had shrunk with the rise of academies which the Authority didn’t audit and the team now took a risk based approach.

RESOLVED that the Audit and Procurement Committee notes:

1)   The performance of Internal Audit against the Audit Plan for 2017-2018.

2)  The results of the Quality Assurance and Improvement Programme and the Acting Chief Internal Auditor’s statement on conformance with the Public Sector Internal Audit Standards.

3)  The summary findings of key audit reviews (attached at Appendix two to the report) that have not already been reported to Audit and Procurement Committee during municipal year 2017-18 and which are relevant to the opinion on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of Coventry City Council's internal control environment.

4)   The opinion of the Acting Chief Internal Auditor on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of Coventry City Council's internal control environment.