Issue - meetings

That the progress made in implementing the actions from the original report be noted.

The Internal Audit Manager presented a report on the outcome of the follow-up review undertaken in response to the findings of the Wales Audit Office (WAO) in the Audit of Financial Statements report considered in September 2015.  Following consideration at that meeting, the follow-up review by Internal Audit had been brought forward to share the findings and give assurance to the Committee, along with other actions from the WAO review.  The report indicated that substantial progress had been made by Employment Services and Payroll to implement most of the recommendations, some ahead of schedule, with work on the remainder underway.

The Chief Executive explained that the Chair and Vice-Chair had been briefed on the outcomes and confirmed that Sharon Carney was the Interim Human Resources and Organisational Development Manager.  As a result of the concerns raised, the establishment of a project group had helped to make progress in putting in place more robust arrangements.  The issues involved a number of complexities but were not about accuracy of payroll payments, and the process was particularly important in respect of Single Status.  The Chief Executive added his appreciation to WAO for raising the concerns to eradicate any risk for future accounting.

Mr. Paul Williams thanked the Chief Executive and officers for their rapid progress and for the new actions added by the Internal Audit Manager.  He referred to the request for employees to complete the ‘Reporting Manager’ fields on the iTrent reports and felt that this should be a stronger directive to Chief Officers for their employees to provide this information.  The Internal Manager said that progress on this action was indicated in the follow-up report and that the need to complete this action would be stressed.  The Chief Executive agreed that an instruction would be issued to require responses back by 31 March 2016 with any incomplete records to be followed up with Chief Officers.

Councillor Alison Halford expressed concern with some of the issues in the report and sought clarity on the area of responsibility for the failings.  The Internal Audit Manager said it was not the fault of the software, but was due to incompletion of some of the data within the fields on the system.  He provided responses on actions being taken to address three of the issues, as set out in the report.  In response to a query on the reporting of accurate data for the Clwyd Pension Fund, he advised that some improvement had been made with more work to be made as the issue was still being investigated.  Councillor Halford asked for more detail on this, which the Internal Audit Manager agreed to provide separately.

When asked for his views by Councillor Halford, the Chief Executive repeated his earlier comments that the issues were around record-keeping and not individuals, software or inaccuracy of payments.  He advised that swift progress had been made on the action plan to the satisfaction of all parties, recognising that there was still some work to do.

Councillor Halford asked the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41