Agenda item

The purpose of this report is to present the Annual Internal Audit Plan for 2014/15 to the Committee.

Declarations of Interest:
None.

Witnesses:

Sue Lewry-Jones, Chief Internal Auditor

Key Points Raised During the Discussion:

1.    The Chief Internal Auditor introduced the report and tabled a revised version of the Internal Audit Plan (attached as Annex 1).  The revisions enabled the inclusion of the Property Investment Strategy in the Plan as it is of high interest to the organisation.  To accommodate this, a reduced number of days has been allocated to Contract Reviews and to Irregularity and Special Investigations including Fraud Prevention.

2.    The Chief Internal Auditor confirmed that she expected to be sufficiently resourced to deliver the Internal Audit Plan.  In response to questions about the need to replace senior auditors, the Chief Internal Auditor informed the Committee that she had successfully recruited a skilled Auditor to fill the current vacancy, who would be starting on 7 April 2014.  Diane Mackay, Audit Performance Manager, would be leaving at the end of April 2014.  She had a huge amount of knowledge, especially on Highways issues.  The Chief Internal Auditor had responded as soon as she had received the letter from Diane Mackay signalling her intention to retire.  Recruitment to fill this upcoming vacancy was underway, with interviews taking place over the course of the current and following week.  There may be a lag on the implementation of the Plan but this could be managed and it was anticipated more traditional financial audit work would be undertaken in the second part of the year.  If necessary, agency staff could be brought in to support these more traditional audits.  Other mitigating actions include cross-skilling other members of the team, ensuring a proper handover, and the collation of the senior auditors emails in Galileo in order to retain corporate memory.

3.    In response to a query about whether any issues arising from the recent floods are reflected in the Plan, the Chief Internal Auditor clarified that the Plan just indicates an intended work plan.  However, it was understood that different factors can affect the Plan during the course of the year.  For example, Operation Horizon will have been affected by the floods.  Discussions will be held with the relevant Head of Service as to how this will affect the timing of the audit.  The Chief Internal Auditor also highlighted the proposed audits of Business Continuity Planning and Emergency Management.  This had been requested by the relevant Head of Service but it had emerged that a Member Reference Group may be looking at these areas.  If this is the case then Internal Audit will not want to duplicate the work.  She requested that Members feed any information they have about upcoming audit areas to her.

4.    The Chief Internal Auditor confirmed that the budget allocation to Internal Audit was mainly for staff costs, although some was for resources such as stationery and IT.  The budget had been adjusted downwards from 2013/14 in response to the service running at a slight surplus.

Actions/Further information to be provided:

None.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee APPROVES:

      i.        The Internal Audit Charter

     ii.        The Internal Audit Strategy

    iii.        The Internal Audit Reporting and Escalation Policy

   iv.        The Internal Audit Quality Assurance and Improvement Programme

    v.        The 2014/15 Internal Audit Plan.

Committee Next Steps:
Completed audit reports will continue to be presented to the Committee throughout the year and an update on performance against the 2014/15 Plan will be reported to the Committee in December.