Issue - meetings
Internal Audit
Meeting: 28/11/2024 - Audit and Governance Committee (Item 34)
Purpose:
To present a summary of the audit work concluded since the last meeting of this Committee.
Recommendations:
That the Audit and Governance Committee resolves to:
1. Note the report.
Invited:
Jaina Misty – Senior Auditor
Madhu Richards - Director of Finance
Additional documents:
- ANN A WODC Internal Audit Plan Progress Nov 2024, item 34
PDF 974 KB
- ANN B WODC Agreed Actions Nov 2024, item 34
PDF 512 KB
- Webcast for Internal Audit
Minutes:
Jaina Mistry, the Swap Internal Auditor, presented a summary of the audit work concluded since the last meeting of the Committee.
The Internal Audit Service was provided to the Council by SWAP Internal Audit Services. SWAP was a local authority-controlled company. The report attached at Annex A set out the work undertaken by SWAP for the Council. It followed the risk-based auditing principles and, therefore, this was an opportunity for the Audit and Governance Committee to be aware of emerging issues which had resulted from SWAP involvement.
The progress report (Annex A) enabled the Committee to monitor the work of the Internal Audit Service and ensure that it remained effective. It also provided the Committee with assurance opinions over areas reviewed within the reporting period, details of audit recommendations and the outcome of follow-up reviews conducted on previous audit recommendations. The plan remained flexible to respond to requests for audits or ad hoc reviews. There was a continued follow up of all agreed actions and a report (Annex B) showing all open agreed actions and those that had been actioned during 2024/25 had been included for Members information.
Based on various questions and queries from Members the following points were explained:
· In terms of the Member allowances report, the Member allowance scheme was facilitated by payroll and the payment of political group tithes varied with no governance around it. Consideration needed to given to whether this changed personal income and tax liability.
· Emergency planning was still retained by Publica and there needed to be assurances that a rota was populated by the team to ensure a staff member was available for the short and medium term to cover West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC). There were Officers who had provided duty cover specifically for WODC; however some of them had left or were employed by a different authority. There was a plan to build up each council to make sure the rotas were populated by 31 March. The priority currently was to have staff for the rota.
Councillor Carl Rylett proposed that the recommendations be approved and Councillor Andrew Cole seconded. This proposal was approved by the Committee.
RESOLVED that the Audit and Governance Committee AGREED to:
1. Note the report.