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 made against the delivery of the 2020/21 Annual Internal Audit Plan and highlighted any significant issues since the last report to the Audit Committee in January 2021. He said an update on anti-fraud activity was also included.

Mr Rock referred Members to the tables at paragraph 3.1 and said several reports had moved to the draft stage and were being discussed with management. He said (1) the Place Directorate Governance (2) the Contract Monitoring of Children’s Commissioned Services (3) Private Sector Compliance with Fire Risk assessments and (4) the Drugs and Alcohol Service – contract monitoring, audits had all been completed. Mr Rock said of the two reports where management responses were awaited, management responses had been received and reports were being finalised. He said he was pleased the Treasury Management audit had achieved a substantial rating and said significant improvement and strong controls were now in place.

Mr Rock said presently he’d be inclined to give an overall ‘limited assurance’ opinion for this year however there were a total of fifteen reports in the pipeline which could sway his opinion, when he presented his final opinion report to the Audit Committee in July 2021.

In reference to Anti-Fraud activity, Mr Rock said this had been hindered by the pandemic however a further property had been recovered bringing the total to twenty. In relation to the Governance report, Mr Rock said Internal Audit had supported management with advice and guidance pertaining to the improvement plan and the reviewing of financial procedures. Mr Rock said he had attended the Finance Improvement Board and had observed the Board, providing challenge and advice to them.

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

Staff Declaration of Interests

Ms Amanda Harcus, Divisional Director for Human Resources and OD said the Chief Executive had touched on the issues experienced with automation of systems. She said the switch to providing an online platform had significantly made a difference in the service’s ability to report and monitor declaration of interest returns from officers in the organisation.

In response to questions and comments from Members the following was noted:

• Councillor Wood asked if the system evidenced an employee’s secondary employment, as direct level authorisation was required from managers. He asked if employees were not declaring secondary employment and how many employees had outside interests that maybe of concern to the Council? Ms Harcus responded stating when using the paper-based system a 95% completion rate had been achieved, however this required a lot of manual resource. She said with automation, the declaration was part of the annual review process and therefore prompted employees to complete it. She said thorough checks were undertaken when new employees joined the organisation with responsibility to complete  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4