Agenda item

To consider a report of the Head of Risk Management and Audit Services.

Consideration was given to a report of the Director of Finance and Head of Risk Management and Audit Services detailing the work undertaken by the Risk Management and Internal Audit Service between April and September 2017.

The following areas of work undertaken by Risk Management and the Internal Audit Service were reported as follows.

Risk Management and Insurance – the key priorities for 2017/18 were detailed as follows:-

·         To review the risk management system to ensure that it complied with best practice but was still practical for use by the organisation;

·         To facilitate the delivery of risk workshops to enable both the Corporate Risk Register to be updated and Operational Risk Registers to be maintained by managers;

·         To facilitate the continued implementation of the Information Governance Framework and prepare for the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations in May 2018;

·         To review the Business Continuity Management system in place to streamline the process to create a management tool that was workable, with the capability to provide knowledge and information should a major incident occur affecting service delivery; and

·         To continue to support managers to assess their risks as services were redesigned to ensure that changes to systems and procedures remained robust and resilient offering cost effective mitigation and that claims for compensation could be successfully repudiated and defended should litigation occur.

Panel Members were notified that the risk management system was under review and work was ongoing to review the Information Governance Framework in light of the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations, which would become applicable in May 2018.  A suite of documents to be used across Greater Manchester was under construction.

With regard to Internal Audit, reference was made to the Audit Plan, which had been approved in May 2017 and covered the period April 2017 to March 2018.  An update on progress against the plan to 30 September 2017 was provided.  It was reported that 42% of the audit plan had been achieved so far, which was in line with previous years.  It was explained that a detailed review of the audit plan was currently underway in conjunction with senior management and a revised plan would be reported to a future meeting of the Panel.

During the first half of the year, eight Final Reports had been issued in relation to systems, risk and managed audits.  In addition, seven draft reports had been issued for management review and responses and these would be reported to the Panel in due course.  Nine school audits were completed during the period, the results of which were summarised.  In addition, two further audits had been completed and the draft reports had been issued to the Schools for management review and responses.

12 Post Audit Reviews had been completed during the period and a further 21 were in progress.

It was reported that the review of Internal Audit against the Public Sector Internal Auditing Standards (PSIAS) highlighted that the service was fully compliant with the requirements of the standard.  PSIAS, introduced from April 2013, required at Standard 1312 that each organisation’s internal audit service was subject to an external assessment “once every five years by a qualified, independent assessor or assessment team from outside the organisation”.  The Peer Review for the Council would be conducted by Blackpool and Bolton and take place in March 2018.

An update was given on the annual governance statement development areas as follows:-

·         Children’s Services

·         Risk Management and Business Continuity Planning

·         Health and Safety

·         Managing Change

·         Care Together

·         Vision Tameside

·         Pension Fund Pooling of Investments

An update was also provided on work undertaken on National Anti-Fraud Network Data and Intelligence Services.

With regard to Irregularities / Counter Fraud Work a summary of cases, which had been investigated during the period April to September 2017, was provided.  In total, 18 cases had been received with 11 still under investigation.  A table detailing the fraud type, number of cases, value and amount recovered to date was discussed.  Members requested that for future reporting the table contained within the report should include a column detailing the number of cases from the previous year.

In relation to Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, it was confirmed that Mazars had been appointed as the Council’s new external auditor from 2018/19 following the procurement process undertaken by Public Sector Audit Appointments Limited.

RESOLVED:

That the report and performance of the Service Unit for the period April to September 2017 be noted.