Mr Paul Rock, Head of Internal Audit, Fraud and Risk presented the Internal Audit and Anti-Fraud progress report. Mr Rock said the report provided an update on the progress against the delivery of the 2019/20 and 2020/21 Annual Audit Plan and highlighted any significant issues since the last report to the Audit Committee in November 2020.

Mr Rock referred to the draft reports and said the Local Community Fund report pending from 2019/20 audit workplan had been completed. He said good progress had been made in the implementation of agreed management action set out in Table 2, with 100% of high priority actions being fully or partially implemented. He said at this stage he’d be giving an overall ‘limited assurance’ however there were twenty plus reports in the pipeline and from initial indicators, he could forecast a better balance between the assurance categories of limited, reasonable and substantial.

Mr Rock referred members to paragraph 3.11 of the report and said he was pleased with the results from the first perception survey of Internal Audit’s role. He said although there were areas which required improvement, he’d be working on this to achieve better outcomes. Regarding Anti-Fraud work, he said the pandemic had limited what could be done, however the team was working on Blue Badge misuse and with the Cabinet Office in relation to the Transliteration pilot. Mr Rock also informed members the Whistleblowing Policy and Anti-Fraud and Corruption strategy had been updated.

The Chair thanked Mr Rock for his report before inviting the Officer to address their individual reports which had received ‘limited’ assurances following Internal Audit’s assessments.

Corporate Governance

Mr Will Tuckley, Chief Executive said a substantial amount of work had been undertaken to improve Corporate Governance such as the lifting of the MCHLG intervention, which had led to significant improvements. Mr Tuckley said despite this, he was disappointed with the internal audit findings of ‘limited’ assurance. He said since 2019 work to improve the strategic direction of governance had taken place and the Corporate Code for Governance had been reviewed. Check and balances were in place to ensure this is discussed at Corporate Leadership Team Board (CLT) and is presented to the Audit Committee for review and comment. He said the action plan for Corporate Governance is combined with the internal audit outcomes and the recommendations from the Grant Thornton report. He said it was vital that this sat at the heart of what the Council does.

In response to questions from Members the following was noted:

·         Mr Tuckley acknowledged the CIFPA report referred to in the independent review and the work commissioned to Grant Thornton in 2017 ought to have been part of the corporate priorities of the CLT Board. He said reports commissioned should be owned by the CLT Board such as the work on the accounts and going forward this would certainly be the case.

·         The Mayor added he concurred with Mr Tuckley that commissioned reports should be the priority of the CLT Board and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4