Issue - meetings

FSD21030

This was a summary of work undertaken in the last year. Covid 19 had significantly impacted on the Internal Audit Team directly, with some of the team being allocated to other duties and those remaining provided assurance on Covid 19 work streams. This was in addition to the impact on services due to be audited.

Much of the work of the Internal Audit Team had been directed towards Covid related functions and dealing with the various government grants that were due to be allocated to businesses. The Internal Audit Team were involved in providing advice on setting up the processes required so that the various grants could be paid out quickly, effectively and with the minimum amount of fraud. This work had been unremitting. The work undertaken was therefore different in style to previous years, with more assurance being provided in real time. 

Things had been different over the course of the last year and Internal Audit (in order to ensure they had sufficient evidence for their annual opinion) had sought signed assurances from Directors that their Departments were following the relevant rules and regulations. Assurances had also been sought by Internal Audit from what was termed as the Council’s ‘second line of defence’ functions which included departments such as Legal, Health and Safety, IT, various performance management teams, Safeguarding and Complaints.

Internal Audit was due to have an external assessment on themselves by an audit team from another council, but this had to be abandoned because of Covid and had now been scheduled for quarter four of next year. It was planned that the LBB Internal Audit Team would undertake a review of the London Borough of Hackney’s internal audit function in 2023 to 2024.

The Head of Audit and Assurance expressed the view that after an analysis of the quality and effectiveness of Internal Audit, he was confident that the service generally conformed with the Public Sector Internal Audit Standards.

The Internal Audit Team was looking at the use of rotation of assignments and at updating the risk register with respect to fraud related risks. Going forward, new checklists would be introduced and considered before new audits were undertaken.

The Head of Audit and Assurance confirmed that there had been no threats/interference to the scope or objectivity concerning the work undertaken by Internal Audit. He confirmed that overall, LBB had an adequate and effective framework of governance, risk management and a sound system of control. 

At this point the Committee moved briefly into the Part 2 section of the meeting to discuss issues relating to cyber security. (The details of this discussion will be found in the Part 2 Minutes).

The Committee was provided with a brief update concerning the finalising of the Council’s accounts for 2019/20 and 2020/21.

A brief discussion took place with respect to the matter of fixed assets. The comment was made that no one really knew what they were worth (until the point of sale) and what was the risk to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 78