Agenda item

(Chief Internal Auditor) To consider and comment on the attached report.

The Senior Auditor, S Linsley, presented the Internal Audit Monitoring Report and updated the Committee on the work completed by internal audit since the previous meeting.  The ‘feeder systems and reconciliations’ audit had received limited assurance; the associated recommendations were being progressed. There were seven overdue items on the recommendation tracker, all of which were medium priority.

S Linsley introduced the Whistleblowing Policy and highlighted the minor revisions to the policy for safeguarding reporting and changes in contact details of staff. She advised the Committee that had been some minor changes around types of fraud in the updated Anti-Fraud and Corruption Strategy and that a review of the current Internal Audit Charter confirmed it was fit for purpose and fully compliant with the Public Sector Internal Audit Standards (PSIAS) and no changes were proposed.

The Code of Corporate Governance was a statement of the systems by which the Council directs and controls the exercise of its functions and how it relates to the local community, The review has confirmed the Code was still up to date, in line with good practice and fit for purpose. Minor changes had been made to remove references to Covid-19 as a result of the Council moving out of the reactive phase of the pandemic and into recovery.

An update on the work of the corporate fraud team and progress made against the issues identified in the Annual Governance Statement were detailed in the report.

The committee sought assurance on that all data would be transferred to the cloud, whilst technical detail could not be provided A Small advised that this would be built into project structure and processes.

Resolved:

The Committee:

•   noted the summary of the work of Internal Audit and the Corporate Fraud Team for the period September to November 2022

•   noted the revised Whistleblowing policy

•   approved and referred the revised Anti-Fraud and Corruption Strategy to full Council for approval

•   approved the revised Internal Audit Charter, and

•   approved the Code of Corporate Governance