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)            Clarification. A Member of the Committee asked for clarification as to what the first sentence under Latest Service Update from Action Owner on page 10 of Appendix 1 meant. The Interim Director of Corporate Services explained that garden waste is managed through the Council’s CRM system which the Council are looking to stop using in the near future, therefore the Council is prioritising moving garden waste off of the CRM system and onto the My Council Services system.

b)            Planning Enforcement Notices. A Member of the Committee asked what the Council are doing to keep the enforcement notice register up to date. The Chair informed the Committee that officers are working to address this and significant improvements have been made.  The Chair highlighted that the due date has been revised and officers hope to have addressed this by the end of August 2024. The Internal Auditor informed the Committee that 15 management actions were identified and 9 have been completed, 1 is pending, and 5 are overdue, however more progress could have been made since this report was compiled. The Interim Director of Corporate Services informed the Committee that a lot of action has been taken to improve the services, including recruiting additional resource. The Interim Director of Corporate Services agreed to get an update on this item to feed back to Committee Members. The Chair raised that a key performance indicator is now provided to the Planning Committee, as reports on enforcement notices to give insight into the number of cases the Council is dealing with.

c)            Digital Inclusion. A Member of the Committee raised the issue that not all residents will have computers or be well versed in how to navigate them, so it is not appropriate to only have enforcement notices online. The Chair noted the comments and agreed to take it away as an action. The Chair explained that this a part of a bigger task of digital inclusion and ensuring residents are included and information is accessible.

d)            Paper enforcement register. A Member of the Committee asked if they were to request to see the paper register, would it be available and up to date. The Chair invited the Member to do so and informed the Committee that the question would be fed back to the relevant officers.

e)            Thanks. The Vice Chair expressed their thanks to the Internal Auditor for the comprehensive 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.