Issue - meetings

This report summarises progress made against the Internal Audit Plan.

The Committee received a report introducing the Internal Audit Plan and Charter for 2021/22.

The Committee received a verbal introduction form the Head of Policy, Performance and Governance, in which they informed the Committee of a change made to the Plan following publication. The Local Plan would now be audited in quarter four of 2021/2022 instead of 2022/2023. Members requested a copy of the finalised version.

The following matters were raised by the Committee:

a)            Air quality: Members raised concerns about the lack of air quality monitoring throughout the Borough, and spoke about the potential of this being improved. This would not be in the audit plan for 2021/1022 but was referred to the Environmental Health Manager who was in attendance and confirmed monitoring was being undertaken.  There is an annual report to Defra and air quality would be captured in the Climate Change Action Plan.

b)           Internal Audit Fee: Following a question from a Member, the internal Audit representative confirmed that whereas external audit is purchased for an agreed fee, the internal audit service is purchased per number of days in the plan, based on the level of risk and equating to a fee. There must be sufficient audit coverage to enable the Head of Internal Audit to provide the Head of Internal Audit’s Year End Opinion providing assurance from the audits undertaken that year.

Following consideration, it was resolved unanimously that the Committee:

(1)      Agreed to endorse the Internal Audit Plan 2021/22 as set out at Appendix 1

(2)      Approve the Internal Audit Charter 2021/22 as set out at Appendix 2.