Agenda item

To consider the report on internal audit outstanding recommendations.

The Chairman stated that at the last committee meeting the committee had expressed concerns regarding unimplemented Internal Audit Recommendations and had requested that the list of outstanding recommendations be reviewed and a report on this provided to the committee.

Andy Brown, Interim Corporate Director of Resources (S151 Officer), gave an update to the meeting. It was explained that some of the outstanding recommendations dated to before the pandemic, which was still ongoing and so the list of outstanding recommendations had required review. Internal Audit Management Actions were an integral part of the Councils control systems and part of a suite of management tools that should be used.

Paragraph 6 on page 75 of the agenda gave a summary of outstanding actions and categorised them. 20 had been completed, 25 were still to be implemented and were at the same priority level, 3 had increased in priority and 16 had been overtaken by organisation change. So, these would more than likely still be implemented but under different pathways. The detailed review could be seen in the appendix on page 78.

It was explained that the majority of outstanding actions were priority 3, however these still needed to be acted upon. Recommendations and timescales were still valid. The Audit and Governance Committee should still have oversight of overall totals to ensure management were still delivering. However, going forward, now that the cleanse had been undertaken, the focus should be on priority 1 & 2 actions, but with an oversight on priority 3 actions.

In response to questions it was stated that there may be differences between appendix C from SWAP (page 53) and then appendix 1 (page 78) as the Q3 report from SWAP was looking backwards. Now that the review had taken place, the updated list could be circulated to SWAP and a consolidated list developed that both SWAP and Wiltshire Council were happy with.  

SWAP confirmed that they had reviewed the list and were happy with it, therefore they could update their systems and produce an updated list. The Chairman requested that they pay particular attention to any actions coming off the list when the report was produced to ensure SWAP were happy.

During debate councillors queried the exact meaning of ‘overtaken by organisational change’. Some particular examples were detailed that Members were concerned about and in particular the accountability for these actions and who was responsible for them. It was explained that actions which had been overtaken by organisation change and that were now under organisational recovery, were part of the Organisational Recovery Programme for which Andy Brown and Jo Pitt (Director - HR & Organisational Development) were responsible. Some actions which had been overtaken by organisational change were now under the Corporate Leadership Team, acting as the Programme Board.

In response to the debate on the item, the proposed recommendations were adapted by the committee and it was,

Resolved:

·       To accept the update on the review of outstanding internal audit recommendations.

·       That management and SWAP should produce a consolidated and agreed list between them, of remaining Internal Audit management recommendations, with target date and accountability, which should include priority 3 recommendations.

·       Going forward, to concentrate on priority 1 and 2 Internal Audit management recommendations and have a separate report for priority 3 at a global level.

·       To ask SWAP to confirm to that they were satisfied that the abandoned or completed actions had been removed for appropriate reasons.

·       That no recommendation would be removed from the list without being reported to the Audit and Governance Committee.