To consider a report that provides an update to the agreed Internal Audit Plan and reviews the work undertaken to date in 2022/23.

Members considered the Internal Audit – Half Year Audit Report 2022-23.  The Head of the Devon Audit Partnership informed Members that the Internal Audit plan for 2022/21 was presented and approved in March 2022. The half year report provides Internal Audits current opinion on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the Authority’s internal control environment.

Overall, and based on work performed to date during 2022/23, and Internal Audits experience from previous years, and the outcome of the Annual Follow Up exercise, the Head of Internal Audit’s Opinion was one of ‘Reasonable Assurance’ on the adequacy and effectiveness of much of the Authority’s internal control framework.  The exception to this was Children’s Services Directorate which is of ‘Limited Assurance’ due to the lack of audits undertaken in this area during the first half of the year.

Members thanked the Devon Audit Partnership Team for all their work supporting the Council and noted that some of the work from 2021/2022 had been finalised in year due to delays as a result of the pandemic.

Members raised questions in relation to:

·                     What the issues were in respect of tenders and contracts and requested a written response to be provided by the Head of the Internal Audit.

·                     What were the issues relating to the Service Level Agreement with the Coroner and when would this be resolved.

·                     Under the section ‘Irregularities Prevention and Detection’ who was responsible for picking up the action and how would this be addressed.

·                     What action was being taken to address the issues in connection with public toilets – the Director of Finance agreed to chase the Director of Pride in Place up for a response and the Head of Internal Audit agreed to provide more detail around this issue with the Committee and Director of Pride in Place.

·                     What was the reason for the parking charges not going through proper procedures and financial regulations.

·                     What was the reason for the difficulty in recovering fines from parking charges.

·                     Were there any other areas that the Head of Internal Audit had concerns.

·                     The audit provided ‘reasonable assurance’ in respect of Corporate Complaints, however, there had been a history of problems with Corporate Complaints and Freedom of Information requests not being responded to on time.  There was a need to look at this over a longer period of time to identify patterns and trends.  Members questioned how the Audit Committee could make a difference to improve responses. 

·                     Have Council Tax and business rates processes been reviewed as changes were taking a long time to be implemented/updated.

·                     What work has been done around commissioning and TDA.

·                     What was the relationship between SWISCo and Healthmatic regarding toilets and was the contract held by the Council or SWISCo.

Resolved (unanimously):

Members challenged the reasonable assurance given to Corporate Complaint System having had four years of reviewing performance on complaints and two action plans and requested that consideration be given to the 2023/2024 Audit Programme to reviewing the overall effectiveness of the Corporate Complaints process, especially the services which have high levels of complaints.