Issue - meetings

Annual Assurance Statement & Internal Audit Annual Report 2020/21

Meeting: 27/05/2021 - Audit and Governance Committee (Item 50)

50 Annual Assurance Statement and Internal Audit Annual Report 2020/21 pdf icon PDF 533 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Shared Internal Audit Service (SIAS) Officer gave a brief summary of the report. He also asked that the Head of Strategic Finance and Property give the Committee assurance that the scope and resources for internal audit were not subject to inappropriate limitations in 2020/21.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance and Property confirmed this to the Committee. The Chairman said that fewer reports had been delivered and asked if this was due to the pandemic. He also asked whether the Committee could draw conclusions from the change in the number of recommendations made.

 

The SIAS Officer said it was difficult to draw direct conclusions as audits focussed on different areas each year. COVID had affected the work of SIAS, although lots of work could be done remotely. Enough work was carried out to support the assurance opinion, which was the minimum requirement, and there were other sources of information, aside from formal audits, which could be used to support this opinion.

 

Councillor Fernando asked whether the cancelled Emergency Planning audit included scenarios such as pandemics. The SIAS Officer said he would need to look into this and respond to Members outside of the meeting.

 

Councillor Townsend asked whether software auditing would be part of the IT audits, and whether this could be added to the schedule.

 

The SIAS Officer said that IT audits were conducted by specialist third party partners. Particular areas would be reviewed cyclically, if they had not been audited for a period or were deemed to pose a high risk. However, this should be covered in the Council’s Risk Register and in the Audit Plan.

 

The Insurance and Risk Business Advisor said that the risk scoring of this area had previously been increased due to the Committee’s concerns.

 

The Head of Strategic Finance and Property said that IT Resilience had already been assigned a number of audit days within the Audit Plan.

 

RESOLVED – (A) that the report be received and considered;

 

(B) the SIAS Audit Charter be accepted; and

 

(C) management assurance that the scope and resources for internal audit were not subject to inappropriate limitations in 2020/21 be received.