Issue - meetings

This report advises the Committee on the Council’s internal audit assurance level for 2017/18.

The Committee received a report advising it of the Council’s Internal Audit assurance level for 2017/18.

The Head of Internal Audit’s opinion was detailed in Annex 1 to the report. This stated that the Council had an adequate and effective framework for risk management, governance and internal control. However, the auditor’s work had identified some further enhancements to the framework of risk management, governance and internal control to ensure that it would remain adequate and effective.

The Committee noted that the internal auditor had not issued any reports relating to the Council in 2017/18 with either “no assurance” or “partial assurance”. It was also noted that the auditors’ opinion would not be changed once the one remaining audit for 2017/18 (Cyber security and IT General Controls) had been finalised.

The following matters were considered:

a)            Audit of planning applications income. Following a question from a member of the Committee, the Head of Corporate Governance informed the meeting that this audit had examined the processes followed and security of payments for planning applications submitted to the Council. It had not been a review of the level of income generated by the service.

b)            Management response within 5 working days of draft report. The Committee noted that a low percentage of draft audit reports had received a management response from officers within the five working day target. Officers would seek to improve upon this in future.

Following consideration, the Committee:

(1)          Agreed to receive the Internal Audit Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2018 and the Review of Performance of Internal Audit by the Chief Finance Officer.