Agenda item

That the proposed Regulatory Programme for Performance Audit of the Wales Audit Office for the period April 2012 to March 2013 be received and accepted.

The Head of Finance introduced a report on the proposed Regulatory Programme for Performance Audit for the Wales Audit Office (WAO) for the period April 2012 to March 2013.

The Chief Executive explained that the Programme related to the performance side of annual work undertaken by the WAO and that the Programme assessed the overall effective governance performance alongside national studies.  The Programme had been agreed by the Council and WAO with involvement by the Internal Audit Manager.  The Chief Executive added that he and other senior officers had no objections to the WAO report.

Mr. Huw Lloyd Jones of WAO drew attention to paragraph 6 of the report which indicated work on the annual Improvement Assessment of the Council’s compliance with the 2009 Measure.  This included assessing the likelihood of the Council’s arrangements to secure continuous improvement and would be informed by national studies on all Councils in Wales to influence policies at national level and practices at local level.  He added that Mr. Stephen Martin had previously indicated that an annual full assessment of Councils’ arrangements would be carried out, although it had since been agreed that this would take place every four years.  For the current year, an assessment would be made on the extent to which Councils had followed proposals previously made by WAO.  He detailed the WAO performance work planned for 2012-13 shown in Appendix 1 to the report and fees in Appendix 4 which had been reduced from the previous year to achieve consistency across Wales.

In response to a query by the Chair, the Head of Finance said that VAT costs could be reclaimed by the Council.

For the benefit of new Members of the Committee, the Chair suggested that explanation be given on how self-assessment could be done.  Mr. Lloyd Jones spoke about the increasing reliance on self-assessment by Councils across Wales and the need for this to be done prior to Estyn inspections.  He stated the view of the WAO that mature Councils were able to robustly reflect on their own performance which in turn affected work undertaken by WAO.  He highlighted the availability of CIPFA and Solace guidance on the Annual Government Statement with the emphasis on this being evidence based and engaging with as many people as possible on the process. The discussion earlier in the meeting indicated that the Council’s process for the preparation of the Annual Governance Statement was more advanced than most.

The Chief Executive spoke of his involvement in national work and said there was a growing expectation that self-assessment would increase at the expense of external regulation. The Council’s track record of self-assessment had been measured very highly by external regulators and it was intended to undertake a further assessment over the next 6-8 months with possible involvement by Audit.  Further details of this would be available at a later stage.

RESOLVED:

That the proposed Regulatory Programme for Performance Audit of the Wales Audit Office for the period April 2012 to March 2013 be received and accepted.