Issue - meetings

To receive the Internal Audit Progress report 16 December 2019 to 15 May 2020.

The Assistant Director – Corporate Services gave a summary of the report, which detailed work undertaken by Internal Audit since the last report to the Committee on 13 January 2020 and provided an update on implemented and outstanding internal audit recommendations.

He said that Internal Audit was not considered a critical service and that since 22 April 2020, in tandem with completing audit work as far as possible, Internal Auditors had been working with the Revenues Service and the Benefits Service providing assistance in checking Business Grant applications and Benefit claims.

He said that, as stated in the Draft Annual Governance Statement, eight audits remained unfinished as of 15 May 2020. Two audits were likely to be completed but Internal Interim reports had been issued for the other six audits. All recommendations with an original due date between 31 March and 30 June 2020 had been extended in light of the COVID- 19 emergency.

In response to Members’ questions, progress on the Audit Programme together with risk ratings were clarified. The Assistant Director – Corporate Services explained that, in respect of the Leisure review and the repeated recommendation from 2017/18, some fees information on the website from the Leisure provider had been out of date but had since been corrected.

The Director - Finance and Corporate Services stated that £21,000,000 had to date been received from the Government for Business Rates and that a further £1,028,000 discretionary pot had been agreed with discretionary rules being finalised.

The Chair noted the Internal Audit Progress Report as per the recommendation.