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Annual Head of Internal Audit Opinion

Meeting: 08/07/2020 - Civic Affairs (Item 29)

29 Annual Head of Internal Audit Opinion pdf icon PDF 445 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee received a report from the Head of the Shared Internal Audit Service regarding his opinion on the overall adequacy and effectiveness of the organisation’s internal control environment, governance, and the risk management framework.

 

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

 

      i.         The use of spreadsheets when carrying out gas safety checks had been highlighted as a risk from the audit report; this had been addressed by the introduction of a management system which was part of Orchard Asset Management software that is planned to go live around December 2020.

    ii.         Currently the spreadsheets were still being updated manually but were now being done daily.

   iii.         Acknowledged that not being able to inspect properties due to COVID-19 was a hazard. Those properties did have future appointments in place.

  iv.         Safeguarding was looked at on a regular basis, working with external agencies did have an increased risk and would be recognised in the auditplan going forward.

    v.         Would take forward the matter of water usage as part of the overall risk appraisal.

  vi.         Was not aware of any projects funded by disabled facility grants which had been delayed due to COVID-19.

 vii.         An annual review was undertaken to provide assurance that grant funding (allocated as part of the Better Care Fund) had been spent in accordance with the scheme conditions. A sample of applications were checked from the annual funding allocation.

 

The Chief Executive, the council’s safeguarding champion and chair of the corporate safeguarding group, wanted to give the reassurance that significant work had been done in the past with volunteers as emphasised in previous audits. The mutual aid groups were slightly different as they were in a hybrid territory being their own entities. The council’s relationship was an enabling one rather than managing; going forward the council needed to explore how safeguarding would be brought into those relationships.   

 

Resolved (unanimously) to:

 

Note the contents of the Annual Head of Internal Audit Opinion.