Issue - meetings

Matter for Decision

The 2018/19 shared business case for Internal Audit Services was presented for endorsement, the principles of which were approved on the 13 July and 23 January 2017.

Decision of Executive Councillor for Finance and Resources

i.      Approved the business plan at Agenda Item 6c of the Officer’s report. 

ii.  Delegated authority to the Shared Service Management Board to agree final amendments to the business plan in line with comments received form all three partner individual Councils

Reason for the Decision

As set out in the Officer’s report.

Any Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

Not applicable.

Scrutiny Considerations

The Committee received a report from the Head of the Shared Internal Audit Service.

The Committee made the following comments in response to the report:

     i.        Asked what criteria and objectives were being applied to assess the business plans.

    ii.        Commented that the Internal Audit Service was the eyes and ears for members to ensure that the council complied with its legal obligations.

   iii.        Asked whether there was sufficient capacity within the Shared Internal Audit Plan to deal with unforeseen work that arose.

  iv.        Asked how internal reviews were carried out for services that were shared with other councils and where the service was led by another council.  

The Head of the Shared Internal Audit Service said the following in response to Members’ questions:

     i.        Resourcing was considered when the Shared Internal Audit Plan was developed and the resilience of a shared service should provide assurance. 

    ii.        He worked closely with his counterpart at Huntingdonshire District Council, when an issue arose regarding a shared service they would look to see which council was the host council and they would take the lead to provide assurance to the council who had requested the audit review.

The Executive Councillor commented that the Shared Internal Audit Service was not only the eyes and ears of members but also for managers to have services reviewed.

The Committee endorsed the recommendations by 4 votes to 0:

The Executive Councillor approved the recommendations.

Conflicts of Interest Declared by the Executive Councillor (and any Dispensations Granted)

No conflicts of interest were declared by the Executive Councillor.