Agenda item

The Strategic Audit Plan documents significant, persistent risks that the Council faces and the associated business areas and is used to support the annual planning process to ensure that internal audit continues to provide assurance over the breadth of the Council’s operations.

The ‘3 plus 9-month’ plan approach allows for the first three months to be identified in detail with the remaining nine months being more flexible to reflect the risks and needs of the Council at the time. 

Moira Mackie (Head of Internal Audit) introduced the report and explained that to ensure the Annual Audit Plan (the Plan) was more responsive to changing risks and challenges, it had been developed as a ‘3 plus 9-month’ plan since 2021. Besides, the Internal Audit Service was considering where a programme of continuous auditing could be developed. For example, ‘health and safety’ which used to be audited in isolation might be considered as an area for continuous auditing (pages 42 & 43) where ongoing data would be collected and assessed.  The 2025/2026 Plan had also identified general areas for audit coverage, some of which were confirmed audits with timing while others were evolving audits under discussion. The Committee would be updated about the 2025/2026 Plan during the year.

Councillor Florian Chevoppe-Verdier considered the ‘3 plus 9-month’ approach highly agile allowing priorities to shift in response to local and national events. Separately, he looked forward to hearing more about continuous auditing, how technologies/tools could help achieve better value for money and meeting the increasing demands for auditing from central government.

Noting that ‘Building Control’ was one of the confirmed audits included due to changes in legislation, Councillor Lisa Homan sought more details as it was related to residents’ concerns over planning applications. Moira Mackie said as agreed with the Department of Place, the audit would better be done in Q2 of 2025/26 as there had been a lot of changes in the building regulations. David Hughes (Director of Audit, Fraud, Risk and Insurance) referred to the learnings from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, with the new building safety regulator in place to carry out audits of building control functions. The Internal Audit Service would help the local authority to meet the new regulatory requirements in terms of training, supervision and quality management from planning permission to inspections. 

On Councillor Homan’s concerns about contracting building control functions out from the Council and the resources implications, David Hughes said the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report had recommended the Government to undertake a review of the provision of building control functions by local authorities as well as approved inspectors in the private sector. The audit would also review the regulatory and enforcement roles when delivering building control services while providing advice to residents.

On the Chair’s question about possible delays in completing the audits due to staff turnover, Moira Mackie said there was usually some other staff who could support the audit work with the scope perhaps changing to be more supportive and advisory than assurance.  Also, it might be worth carrying out the audits with the new people as they might do things differently.  She added that changes might be triggered by changes in people, system or legislation. 

The Chair requested that when assurance could not be provided for any confirmed audits, explicit explanations on the situation like people change should be provided to avoid misunderstanding of the presence of ongoing issues. 

ACTION: Moira Mackie

In this connection, Sukvinder Kalsi (Executive Director of Finance & Corporate Services) remarked the Internal Audit Plan 2025/2026 was very comprehensive, covering all the services and key activities of the Council.  It should help assure members about the strong and robust systems, processes and procedures of the Council and reinforce the same among external stakeholders.  Indeed, the External Auditor had relied on the Internal Audit Service to provide assurance when auditing the Financial Statements.

RESOLVED

That the Committee agreed  

1. To note the early draft of the Annual Audit Plan as set out in Appendix 1, and the audit work due to be undertaken in the first quarter of 2025/26; and
2. To note the draft Strategic Audit Plan as set out in Appendix 2.