Issue - meetings

That the report be noted.                          

The Internal Audit Manager presented the report to update Members on the progress of the Internal Audit department.  He detailed the background to the report and explained that transition to a new software package had resulted in a number of audit reviews which had exceeded their budgeted time.  The delays would become less as the team became more familiar with the system and this would be closely monitored to ensure that the pace of completion was picked up for the remainder of the year.  In the first five months, 55% of the annual budgeted time for work on a number of investigations and National Fraud Initiative work had taken place.  The implementation of the integrated audit software was continuing and recommendation tracking through the system would commence shortly. 

                        All reports finalised since the last committee meeting were shown in Appendix C and in referring to the ‘red’ assurance on the Schools Thematic Review, the Internal Audit Manager provided details of the schools that had been visited and the high and medium level recommendations made.  Concerns about Payroll had been raised earlier as part of the discussions on the Statement of Accounts but the Payroll review undertaken by the Internal Audit team had looked at the overall control of the section.  A number of issues had been raised by both the team and the Wales Audit Office (WAO) and a follow-up report on the work of the Group identified earlier by the Chief Executive would be considered by the Committee at its meeting in January 2016. 

Appendix D showed the responses that had been received when tracking recommendations.  For recommendations that had not been implemented on time, the relevant Chief Officer was required to confirm that the reason and the new date were both acceptable to them.  It was also necessary to report on how the risk was being managed before the recommendation was implemented.  The status of outstanding recommendations that were more than two years old were reported and these related to Procurement, Main Accounting, Enforcement and Capital Programme.  The recommendations were still being actioned but had required long-term solutions and most of the long-standing recommendations would be addressed by the end of the year.  The Internal Audit performance indicators were reported on page 42 and the return of client satisfaction questionnaires had improved from 14% at quarter 4 to 53% at quarter 1.  Appendix F provided details of new referrals that had been received, investigations that were still ongoing and investigations that had been completed.   

The Internal Audit Manager commented on the Whistleblowing policies in schools and the concerns that had been expressed by the Committee over the adoption of the policies.  All schools had been contacted to confirm whether they held a policy and to provide a copy for review and the results would be passed to the Chief Officer (Education and Youth) for his team to follow up as necessary. 

Councillor Bernie Attridge raised significant concern about the number of days taken for departments to return draft  ...  view the full minutes text for item 35