Issue - meetings

The report outlines the progress of the Council’s Internal Audit service against the approved Internal Audit Plan for 2023/24 from 1 April 2023.

[15 Minutes]

            The Chair welcomed Iona Bond, Senior Audit and Counter Fraud Manager,from Southern Internal Audit Partnership (SIAP), who then presented the report to the Committee. This outlined the progress of the Council’s Internal Audit service against the approved Internal Audit Plan for 2022/23 from 1 April 2023, up to the end of September. She highlighted key points from the Internal Audit Progress Report. Good progress had been made on the audit plan, and they were almost at the halfway point, which was pleasing. The summary of live audit reviews showed those reviews where management actions were yet to reach their implementation date, and those with management actions running overdue. In relative terms the number of outstanding actions across work being done at Arun was relatively small. Since the last progress report, the only further management actions that were overdue were on Accounts Receivable, Homelessness and Business Continuity. Regarding Homelessness, there were lots of actions to be done in a short space of time and hard work been done which resulted in only one running overdue. The outstanding actions under Accounts Receivable and Debt Management were due to process issues and the updates needed to be reviewed by relevant Committees, but the updates had been made. Annexe one showed further information regarding the high priority overdue actions. Business Continuity showed a number of overdue management actions, however very good progress had been made. On reflection she felt the target date for completing these management actions had been optimistic. The Senior Audit and Counter Fraud Manager did not have any concerns around the overdue management actions at this stage.

Section 7 which was the rolling work programme, showed the progress being made. The Senior Audit and Counter Fraud Manager updated Committee that the review of non-domestic rates (NNDR) showing in the finance section had now been finalised and a draft report on the medium term financial planning process audit, had been sent to Officers. In relation to all Quarter 3 audits, all had now been scoped. Overall, she felt Arun were in a very good position and would be meeting with the Corporate Management Team the following week, as she did at the start of each quarter, to see if any adjustments needed to be made to the plan. There had been very few adjustments made to the plan so far this year which was very pleasing.

          The Chair summarised there was no cause for concern in the work carried out so far and invited questions from Members.

          Debt Management on page 20 stated the Constitution would need to be changed, which was in progress, it was asked how far had this got? The Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer explained that in the Constitution there were some inconsistencies in the amounts to be written off, and the delegated authorities. The debt write off policy first needed to be approved by the Policy and Finance Committee. Once this had been done a report could be taken to the Constitution Working  ...  view the full minutes text for item 444