Agenda item

The Council noted a report from the Audit Committee which detailed the work undertaken by the Committee during the period November 2015 to November 2016 (for copy see file of Minutes).

Councillor J Rowlandson, Vice-Chairman of the Audit Committee, reported as follows:

The Committee had experienced a slight change in membership during the year when the two co-opted member’s terms of office came to an end. The Committee would like to place on record its thanks to Ms Kathryn Larkin-Bramley and Mr Tom Hoban for their work over the past nine years and the valuable contribution that they brought to the committee. 

Two new co-opted members were appointed in April from a competitive group of applicants. They were Mr Clive Robinson and Mr David Beavis. Both had settled in well and had been quick to comment on the effectiveness of the Committee in terms of its professional relationship with officers, the appropriate challenge it brought to processes and the information that it received.

There were four key areas of the Committee’s work during the period that Councillor Rowlandson drew attention to:

Annual Internal Audit Plan

In May the Audit Committee agreed a revised version of the Internal Audit, Strategy, Charter and the annual internal audit 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 outcome of an external review of the Internal Audit Service

The Council’s internal audit service must adhere to Public Sector Internal Audit Standards which came into force in April 2013.  A requirement of the standards is that the service was externally reviewed at least once every five years.

In April and May of this year this external review was completed by Newcastle City Council by way of a peer review.

The outcome of the review was extremely positive and ensured the Council could rely on the internal audit to continue providing an independent, objective assurance and consulting function which added value and improved the organisation’s operations as per its charter and strategy.

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 have 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 again receive an unqualified opinion on both sets of financial statements for the County Council and the Pension Fund. The Committee’s thanks were passed on to all of the officers involved in the process.

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

The Chief Internal Auditor and Corporate Fraud Manager continued to update the Audit Committee on the excellent work being completed in terms of proactive counter fraud work.

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

Councillor Hopgood referred the change of co-opted members on the Audit Committee which had resulted in the loss of some 9 years’ experience and asked that consideration be given to stagger the terms of office of co-optees to ensure such loss of expertise and knowledge did not take place.