Agenda item
First Internal Audit Progress Report 2009/10
This report sets out a summary of the work of Internal Audit for the period from 1 April 2009 to 31st August 2009. The attached report provides further details of this together with the assurance ratings and priority 1 recommendations of those audits for which the final reports have been issued since the start of the financial year.
Minutes:
Simon Lane (Head of Audit and Investigations) presented a summary of the work of Internal Audit between 1st April 2009 and 31st August 2009. He explained that work on the audit was ahead of schedule, with 474 days, or 39 per cent of the plan, having been completed.
Simon Lane then explained that some primary schools were struggling to achieve passes after their Financial Management In Schools (FMSIS) assessments. He added that the team was on target to assess all primary schools by 31st March 2010.
On the subject of foundation schools, Simon Lane explained that there had been concerns about financial management at one of the foundation schools. As the problems had not been identified by the school’s independent auditor, it had been decided that the auditing of these schools would be brought back under the control of the Audit and Investigation Team. Four were currently due to be audited as part of the current 2009/10 Plan and the remainder were expected to be done in the first half of the 2010/11 Plan.
Phil Lawson (Deloitte) then described in more detail the progress of the internal audits for which a Limited Assurance had been awarded since 1 April 2009. The audit of Home Care – Care Management identified weaknesses with regards to the resolution of areas of poor performance on the part of service providers over an extended period of time. Whilst management had identified various issues regarding performance, a number of credit notes were outstanding, and in some instances management had consequently stopped undertaking certain checks, such as on carers' timesheets. In addition, whilst it was management's decision in terms of the extent to which home visits were undertaken, from Internal Audit's perspective the sample size appeared to be relatively small, and the samples selected by management were not covering all service providers. However, on a positive note, the planned introduction of an electronic time monitoring system should help management to address some of the issues.
Phil Lawson went on to explain that the audit of Recruitment had identified several issues; however, management had been aware of the majority of these. However, it was agreed that the audit should go ahead so as to help ensure that management were fully aware of weaknesses from a controls perspective as well as any general improvement and efficiency issues already identified. It was understood that management were seeking to address the majority of the issues through the introduction of an e-recruitment system.
The Joint Commissioning audit had found that, Although a number of weaknesses were identified with regards to Joint Commissioning in Children & Families, to a certain extent these had probably come about due to the team still being relative new. In such situations the tendency is often to focus on getting things up and running, as opposed to concentrating on ensuring that procedures and tasks are fully formalised. One of the priority 1 recommendations was therefore overarching in terms of management ensuring that procedures are documented and that evidence is retained of all tasks and checks undertaken. It is positive to note that detailed management responses were received setting out the actions to be taken.
With regards to the audit of Complaints, Phil Lawson acknowledged that the Ombudsman had previously been generally positive about the Council's performance with regards to complaints handling. However, the audit had identified weaknesses around the controls in place, some of which were linked to the use of two different IT systems and also to the devolved nature of complaints handling. He added that it was understood that there is a wish to move to one IT system, for which there should be greater monitoring functionality, but there have been problems with regards to the support from the software provider.
Councillor H M Patel asked whether deadlines had been set for the implementation of the assurance recommendations. Phil Lawson replied that for each audit, management were required to provide a response to each recommendation raised, confirming the actions to be taken, the responsible officers and a deadline for completion. These deadlines were reviewed for reasonableness in line with the priority of the recommendation, prior to the report being finalised. He added that the recommendations were then followed-up once the deadlines had passed.
RESOLVED:
that the progress made in achieving the 2009/10 Internal Audit Plan and the proposals for the future audit arrangements for foundation schools be noted.
Supporting documents:
- 09-09-24 - Audit Committee 1st Internal Audit Progress Report 2009-10, item 6. PDF 74 KB
- 09-09-24 - Audit Committee - Internal Audit Progress Report, item 6. PDF 357 KB