Agenda item

A report was considered which presented an update on the status of the outstanding recommendations made by Internal Audit during 2018/19 and the final report for the audit undertaken by BMBC on Procurement Arrangements.

C James informed the Committee that the audits in relation to the AMP Technology Centre, accounts payable and payroll had all been concluded and actioned and were therefore not included in the report.

Appendix A covered the actions on the GDPR audit and indicated progress against the actions where relevant.

Appendix B was the Capital Programme, Appendix C Inward Investment, Appendix D Procurement and Appendix E was the full report on the Procurement audit undertaken by BMBC.

In response to a question from R Jarvis on Appendix B, M Thomas commented that the more detailed report on the Capital Programme’s funding streams to be presented to the MCA had slipped to Quarter 2 due to a lack of resources and would now be presented to the MCA in November.

R Adams gave a detailed update on all the actions relating to the Procurement audit.

With regard to BMBC’s Procurement audit report, the Committee felt that some aspects of the report were concerning and that the completion of actions should be speeded up to give further assurance.

Members also queried whether the current Internal Auditors had reviewed the report and actions.

L Mackenzie reported that this would not normally be done until later in the year when preparing the Head of Internal Audit’s opinion.

It was suggested that Internal Audit had some time in contingency which could be used to do some interim work that could give assurance to the Committee about progress being made.

D Smith commented that the action plan and the dates had been agreed with the previous internal auditors who had made the recommendations.  The dates were set against planned interventions so that the recommendations could be implemented in a consistent way.  This was a balanced approach against the level of risk attached to the recommendations but D Smith would welcome a further external view to ensure that it was a balanced approach.

L Mackenzie commented that there could be some benefit if Internal Audit took a second look, but agreed that they would not want to disrupt the arrangements already in place.

R Jarvis commented that there were a couple of questions put by Angela Marshall who had been unable to attend the meeting, which could be relevant to the current discussion about closing out audit work through internal audit.

On the additional pieces of work that have been added, are these key priorities based on their risk profile?  Is there a prioritised list of substitute audits that can be included in the Plan each year if needed, or are these add-on ad hoc and arise at the spur of the moment should additional projects be needed?

L Mackenzie replied that the Audit Strategy showed what was planned to be included, but work could be introduced based on emerging risks.

The Internal Audit report on the agenda today asked for approval to change the original Plan and put some of the time saved into contingency; the Procurement audit was a good example of a risk area where, with approval, Internal Audit could use some of those days to do that extra piece of work.

Cllr Jones suggested that the report at Appendix E should have been included before the Action Plan to avoid confusion.  This was acknowledged.

RESOLVED:

(i)         That the Internal Audit recommendation tracker be noted.

(ii)        That the final audit report for Procurement Arrangements be noted.

(iii)       Request that officers, in conjunction with Internal Audit, reconsider the appropriateness of the timescales assigned to the recommendations of the Procurement Audit.