Issue - meetings

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

The report summarised progress against the Internal Audit Plan 2023-2024.

The following matters were considered:

a)            Audit Reviews. A Member of the Committee queried the table set out on page 239, and asked if the overdue items were due to waiting on information from EEBC or audit resource. The Internal Auditor responded to explain that the target dates were identified by Council Officers and the RAG rating is reflecting the original target date assigned to the action. The Internal Auditor continued to explain that the appendices attached to the report explain the original target date given and the revised due date and provide further information around what the actual observation was on the high priority actions.

b)            Planning Enforcement. A Member of the Committee asked why there was a period where the Council did not have any Planning Enforcement Staff. The Chief Finance Officer responded to inform the Committee that as detailed on page 240, the Council recruited a new permanent enforcement officer after the completion of the Internal Audit. Another Member asked about issues surrounding Planning Enforcement and raised that it would be a pertinent item for further scrutiny. The Chair informed that Committee that prior to the hiring of the permanent Enforcement Officer, there was a temporary Enforcement Officer who was employed on a temporary contract, meaning the Council has not gone without an Enforcement Officer, they have just been employed on a temporary basis until now. The Business Assurance Manager informed the Committee that the Head of Service provided a statement in response to the assurance report and shared that the current enforcement officer is making progress on the backlog of cases, alongside several other improvement actions that have been implemented to address the observations made in the report.

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.