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Items
No. |
Item |
33. |
Declarations of Interest
Members are asked to declare
any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any
matter to be considered at this meeting.
Any Member with a Disclosable
Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting
when the matter is under consideration and should notify the
Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing
as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary
Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the
Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28
days.
Any Member with an affected
Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the
meeting. There is no requirement to
withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected
interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the
interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the
meeting.
Minutes:
There were no declarations of
interest.
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34. |
Minutes of previous meeting PDF 209 KB
To
approve as a correct record the minutes of the meetings of the
Committee held on 30 January 2019.
Minutes:
RESOLVED
that the minutes of the meeting of the Committee
held on the 30 January 2019 be approved as a correct record, and
signed by the Chairman.
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35. |
Urgent Items of Business
Any other items which, pursuant to Section
100B(4)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972, the Chairman decides
are urgent.
Minutes:
There were no urgent items of
business.
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36. |
Interim Audit Report PDF 537 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Sally Hendrick, Head of Audit and Risk Management attended the
Committee and presented a summary of the Internal Audit activity
during the period April 2018 to 13 March 2019.
Sally Hendrick advised the Committee that:
- The report followed the interim report provided to the Committee
on 30 January 2019.
- Section 3.4 set out the major control issues identified as the
number of audits with a limited assurance opinion and/or priority 1
recommendation and increased occurrence of limited
assurance/priority 1 recommendations being issued again at
follow-up audits.
- Common themes arising out of the audits included poor debt
management, weaknesses in some financial control across the Council
and review and monitoring arrangements in some services such as the
annual review of some residential care cases in Adult Social Care
and quarterly Direct Payment checks not taking place or being
behind schedule. CMT was to consider
common themes of weakness to review the provisional internal audit
plan and ensure this addressed these areas adequately.
- Section 3.6 provided details on nine audits with major issues
(eleven audits in this category had previously been reported at the
last meeting on 30 January 2019). These
included two ‘repeat offenders’ – Business Rates
and Council Tax.
- A
priority one recommendation was raised to address weaknesses in
financial monitoring of S106 monies.
- One priority 1 recommendation was raised in respect of
uncertainty about the completeness of sickness
recorded.
- A
priority 1 recommendation was raised due to non-compliance with
controls to review and approve purchase card
expenditure.
- Appendix A provided details on the status and outcome of all
audits carried out to-date in 2018/19 which showed that delivery
against the planned programme was on track with audits finalised,
issued in draft or in progress.
- Appendix C provided an update from managers of 2017/18 audits
where a limited assurance/priority 1 recommendation had been given
more than once.
In
response to questions from Members, Sally Hendrick, Head of Audit
and Risk
Management advised the Committee that:
- The main weakness identified in financial monitoring of S106
monies had arisen because the monitoring had been carried out by
one individual for many years and following their departure, there
had been a delayed handover which had resulted in the monitoring
spreadsheet not being updated. New
processes had been agreed to address the issue and ICT had been
invested in to reduce the reliance on spreadsheets and the
implementation was now in progress. One
error in the allocation of S106 monies had been identified whereby
the sum of £10,000 was allocated somewhere when it had
already been spent.
- It
was noted that if a proportion of S106 monies was allocated
incorrectly to different budgets or not allocated at all then the
budget holder may lose the monies as there was a limited time to
spend the money before it went back to the Developer.
- As
outlined in the Creditors report in the pink section, a transaction
had been identified where an officer had approved a transaction for
£92k when their Agresso system
approval limit was ...
view the full minutes text for item 36.
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37. |
Annual Audit Plan PDF 429 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Sally Hendrick, Head of Audit
and Risk Management presented a summary of the Provisional Internal
Audit Plan for 2019/20.
- Sally Hendrick
advised the Committee that the 2019/20 Internal Audit Plan had
increased from 454 days to 517 days. The increase of 63 days was
largely due to the increased number of audits in 2019/20 to follow
up limited assurance audit reports from 2018/19.
- Members were advised that the Plan proposed was provisional.
With the number of limited assurance reports being higher than in
previous years, CMT was currently reviewing the audit reports with
a limited assurance opinion and/or priority 1 recommendation to
identify any key, recurring themes arising from these audit reviews
and assess if the 2019/20 plan adequately covered these
themes.
- The new Director of Delivery, Kevin Gibb, had only just started
in post and would be consulted on what he was looking for but had
already indicated he would like an audit on GDPR to be
undertaken.
- Following a suggestion by Members that the absence management
audit should include time management, Sally Hendrick advised that
it was unlikely that any processes to improve time recording would
be fully in place by the time of the next absence management
report. She had suggested a separate
audit on time recording for 2019/20 but again this had not been
included for the same reason.
The
Chairman commented that some of the audits were classed as
follow-up; Sally Hendrick explained that sometimes this meant a
narrowing-down on the issue uncovered but that a note could be made
that indicated all those 2019/20 audits that were limited in
2018/19.
RESOLVED: that the
Provisional Internal Audit Plan for 2019/20 be approved.
Councillor Ian Leake thanked the
auditors for their work and for the level of detail and
transparency in both the Interim Audit Report and Internal Audit
Plan for 2019/20 and asked the Committee to commend and value the
work that had been undertaken.
Councillor Ian Leake added that because
the auditors had carried out their work so effectively, Members had
been made aware of the problems and how they were being
addressed.
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