Agenda item

To consider the report of the assurance manager (attached).

The committee considered the assurance manager’s report on internal audit activity during the second quarter 2016/17.  This summarised the outcomes of recent audit activity.  Five audits had been completed during the quarter, one of which, regarding joint risk management 2016/17, had received limited assurance.

Joint Risk Management 2016/17

The committee considered the main findings and recommendations of the internal audit report. Unfortunately, a small section of the report had been omitted from the printed copies so would be recirculated to members.

In response to members’ questions, the committee was advised that:

·         Internal audit carried out a six monthly follow up on all non-financial and non-key financial audits to establish the implementation status of agreed recommendations.  All key financial system recommendations were followed up as part of the annual assurance cycle.

·         The corporate services outsourcing had resulted in a reduction in the number of Council staff.  This meant that if staff were diverted to a one off event, e.g. a snap general election, there was an increased risk of other essential work not being completed.

·         The current risk management strategy was under review and would be submitted to the committee’s March 2017 meeting for approval.

Vale of White Horse, West Way, Botley, August 2016

The committee considered the findings from an investigation conducted by internal audit in relation to the West Way development, Botley.

The investigation had concluded that:

·         There were some minor control weaknesses with the end to end consultation process, and internal audit had identified concerns with the analysis of the consultation responses.  Whilst internal audit did not consider the concerns significant enough to change the overall outcome of the consultation report, it concluded that the council’s analysis of the responses was not executed effectively, it was not well presented and the consultation report was open to different interpretations. 

·         Whilst no illegality had occurred, there had been communication, information sharing and decision making at a cabinet, committee and councillor briefing level which indicated a conflict of interest and/or the appearance of bias.  It was identified that five councillors discussed and made decisions in relation to planning and property matters concerning the West Way development.

The committee was advised that the heads of planning and legal and democratic services had accepted the recommendations and had already taken steps to implement them.

Overdue recommendations

Appendix 2 to the report summarised all overdue recommendations within each service area.

The committee was informed that, due to a re-allocation of recommendations from corporate strategy and leisure to HR, IT, technical services, economy, property and corporate policy, the former’s overdue recommendations had fallen from 38% to zero whilst the latter’s had increased from 45 to 50%. In addition, the implementation of recommendations by planning services had resulted in a reduction from 91 to 75% in its overdue recommendations.

The head of planning reported on the steps his service was taking to implement overdue recommendations and assured the committee that this would be reflected in the statistics in the next few months.

RESOLVED: to note the internal audit management report for the second quarter of 2016/17.