Issue - meetings

This report summarises progress against the Internal Audit Plan 2023-2024.

The Committee received a report summarising progress against the Internal Audit Plan 2023-2024.

The following matters were considered:

a)            Assurance Opinion Categories. A Member of the Committee asked for a definition of Limited as one of four categories of assurance opinion. The Internal Auditor informed the Committee that a definition of all four categories of assurance opinion could be found on page 128 of the agenda and confirmed that Limited means, ‘significant gaps, in either the control framework or non-compliance with the controls that are in place.’  The Internal Auditor explained to the Committee that when the report concludes with limited assurance, they will receive further details, including a summary of the observations and the actions that managers are putting in place to address them in the progress report.

a)            Concern about Limited Assurance Opinions. A Member of the Committee asked if there is any concern about the amount of Limited category opinions listed on page 130. The Internal Auditor responded to state that, in regard to the table on page 130, it's important to look at the report dates on some of those, although it appears that there are a number of limited within that, they do span over the last two 2 1/2 financial years and that table only including reports where actions still remain overdue. The Internal Auditor informed that Committee that the wider assurance given in the annual report, which has concluded as reasonable assurance on the whole across the year is important to note. The Internal Auditor highlighted to the Committee that they are consistently working positively with Officers and with Members to ensure that the audit plans delivered are truly risk-based audit plans, therefore, although the conclusion may come out as limited overall on some reviews, there is positive collaborative work with Officers taking place to progress in the right direction.

Following consideration, the Committee unanimously resolved to:

(1)      Note the internal audit progress report 2023-2024 from Southern Internal Audit Partnership (SIAP) attached at Appendix 1.