Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Corporate Director of Resources which provided information on the outcome of the Redmond Review (the Review) into the Oversight of Local Audit and the Transparency of Local Authority Financial Reporting (for copy see file of minutes).

Councillor Rowlandson suggested that a lot of the report didn’t apply to this Council; they were not included in the 40% that did not get their audits in on time and a lot of the recommendations were already in place and this suggested Durham was doing well.

I Rudd asked whether the recommendation would affect the internal audit function and whether internal audit got involved in year end checking of accounts.  The Finance Manager explained the recommendation was to encourage external and internal auditors to work more closely and confirmed that there could be some duplication of work which could be avoided in future.  The Interim Chief Internal Auditor and Corporate Fraud Manager confirmed that the internal control work was done throughout the year and focused around core financial systems rather than the year end checking of accounts. The findings from this work could potentially be used, however, as a further source of assurance by external auditors.

Resolved:

That the report be noted.