Issue - meetings

Report DRR19/040

The Audit Sub-Committee met on 4^th June 2019 and considered the Audit report on Total Facilities Management. One of the recommendations had been accepted by management in principle, but without any action being proposed. Members expressed concern regarding this, and asked for the matter to be referred back to the ER&C PDS Committee for their attention and scrutiny.

The Head of Asset and Investment Management provided assurance that monitoring took place.  There were approximately 400 reactive maintenance tasks per month and Officers were confident that these tasks were monitored through self-reporting.  In addition to this, applications for payment submitted by Amey were scrutinised line by line.  There were very few occasions when the same issue was submitted a number of times as a result of slightly differing descriptions of the same fault.  However these were always picked up through scrutiny of the applications for payment.  It was also possible for the client team to audit the raising of faults and the resources being put into fixing faults.

Responding to a question from the Chairman concerning repeat faults, the Head of Asset and Investment confirmed that the Client Team put a lot of effort into analysing trends.  The majority of issues with repeat fault trends were the result of staff behaviours which had previously been discussed at Committee.

A Member who had attended the Audit Sub-Committee meeting confirmed that the Audit Team did not have a level of confidence about how the process worked and there were concerns that the system was not robust and relied too heavily on the meetings that took place with Amey on a Monday morning.  The Head of Asset and Investment confirmed that the audit had focused on the process for monitoring.  Amey operated a standard system for fault reporting and the internal checks that were in place were broadly in line with what would be expected.  The Client Team had also put in place other measures for checking and whilst there was always a small risk that something could be doubled charged it was difficult to see what more could be done without adding further resource.

The Committee noted that it was a small Client Team (of 3 members of staff) that undertook some checks around the Civic Centre site.  The Chairman indicated that this should have provided some assurance but it was suggested that it would be helpful to conduct more visible checks in the future.

A Member highlighted the significant amount of detailed scrutiny that the TFM Contract had been subjected to over the past year and suggested that this level of scrutiny should also be applied to contracts in other portfolios such as Adult Care and Health where there were similar serious concerns that required detailed consideration.

Noting that grounds of urgency had been applied in order to ensure that the issues were scrutinised at the earliest opportunity, the Chairman urged all PDS Committee to bring referrals from the Audit Committee forward straight away.

RESOLVED: That the report  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31

FSD 19050

The report informed Members of recent audit activity across the Council and provided updates on matters that had arisen from the previous meeting of the Committee.

The overall objective of the Financial Strategy and Budget Compliance Audit was to review the key controls around the Council’s financial strategy and budget monitoring arrangements. Members noted that controls were in place and working well. Internal Audit had made three priority 2 recommendations to improve the framework of controls around the Financial Strategy and budget monitoring arrangements.

Members were appraised concerning the audit of Housing Benefit and the Council Tax Reduction Scheme. They were pleased to note that the audit opinion was ‘Substantial’. A priority one and a priority two recommendation had been made to improve controls.

However, the audit of Arboricultural Services revealed many defects, and four priority one recommendations had been raised, along with six priority two recommendations. The priority one recommendations related to:

·  Deficiencies in the payment process

·  A significant number of orders remained ‘open’ on the ‘Confirm’ system.

·  Deficiencies were identified in the way the contract was monitored

·  Defaults were not being processed correctly

The value of the defaults had been estimated at £6357.00 and it was recommended that the default amount be recovered in the final invoice payment. The audit opinion for Arboricultural Services was therefore ‘Limited’. The Head of Audit and Assurance explained that Arboricultural Services had lost the Service Manager in August 2018, and that one of the remaining officers had to step into the role at short notice on an interim basis, and probably with an inadequate hand over. In January 2019, two more officers left the service, and this was probably one of the main reasons why there had been so many difficulties. Additionally, the management of this contract had not been passed over to the Business Performance Management Team as had other ECS (Environment and Community Services) contracts. Members found this surprising and wondered why this was the case. It was anticipated that now a business performance framework was going to be used, with a corrective action plan adopted—that the situation would improve significantly.

It was noted that the service still had staffing issues, but recruitment was now underway to recruit a new officer.

The Chairman was disappointed to hear of further problems with an ECS contract, and was pleased to note that the contract would be monitored going forward by Sarah Foster’s team.

It had been mentioned that the new Arboricultural Service contract had commenced in April 2019. A Member wondered how a new contract could be negotiated when there were so many issues with the previous contract. It was explained that enough data relating to work undertaken and completed existed to enable this to be done.

A Member expressed concern that the contract had been allowed to drift along for so long without management control. He felt sorry for the Interim Service Manager and suggested that perhaps the Executive Director for Environmental and Community Services be asked to attend  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8