Agenda item

The Council noted a report from the Audit Committee which detailed the work undertaken by the Committee during the period February to September 2015 (for copy see file of Minutes).

Councillor E Bell, Chairman of the Audit Committee, reported as follows:

The Committee had experienced a small change during the year with three Members leaving the committee and three Members joining.   The Committee welcomed Councillors John Robinson, Joanne Carr and Mark Davinson and placed on record its thanks to Councillors Jed Hillary, Sonia Forster and Tracie Smith for their work over the past two years and the valuable contribution they brought to the Committee. 

There were three key areas of the Committee’s work in this period that Councillor Bell drew attention to:

Annual Internal Audit Plan

In June the Committee agreed a revised version of the Internal Audit, Strategy, Charter and Annual Plan from the Chief Internal Auditor and Corporate Fraud Manager. 

The Committee challenged and supported the work that was proposed and agreed the work programme for the coming year. 

The work completed by Internal Audit continued to provide assurance to the Committee that the Council’s control environment, governance arrangements and management of its risks was sound.

Internal Audit continued to update the Committee on a quarterly basis.  The Committee provided the appropriate challenge and a number of officers had attended to provide explanations and answer questions.

The Statement of Accounts

In September the Committee received the audit completion letters from the external auditor, Mazars.  This was the third financial year Mazars had completed an external audit on the Council’s Financial Statements, the Pension Fund’s Financial Statements and an assessment of the Council’s Value for Money arrangements.

It was very pleasing to receive an unqualified opinion again on both sets of financial statements for the County Council and the Pension Fund. 

The continuing good work of the Council’s Corporate Fraud Team

The Chief Internal Auditor and Corporate Fraud Manager had updated the Audit Committee on the work being completed in terms of proactive counter fraud work.

In particular the work completed in accordance with the National Fraud Initiative around Single Person Discount eligibility, which when it was completed returned the Council around £320,000 and ensured that people use the process fairly and correctly.

The report also demonstrated activity that was being completed across the Council in order to deter fraud from occurring at the outset and that prevention was indeed better than cure.