Agenda item - Internal Audit Strategy and Annual Audit Plan 2019/20

RESOLVED: That the Committee approved the Internal Audit Strategy and Annual Audit Plan for 2019 / 20, subject to the identification of any areas for further consultation, or the potential addition or deletion of reviews currently included in the plan.

64.1    The Audit Manager introduced the report, stating that he had consulted with many Strategic Directors, looked at other Authorities and reviewed past work from the previous three years work as part of the process.  He confirmed that there were always emerging issues which were covered by a general contingency and one for emerging risks.  He also highlighted the chart depicting the planned use of audit days for 2019/20.

64.2    Councillor Sykes asked about the Bar Chart on page 126 where the two areas of Adult Social Care and Children & Learning appeared to have fewer resources, and asked the Audit Manager what he would do if he had 30% extra audit resource?  The Audit Manager replied that the levels on the Bar charts did may appear to appear to be lower than expected but he was aware of this.  He stated that last year they had undertaken more work in these directorates and that secondly, for example, the Finance & Resources plan includes audits such as Care Payments.  The Audit Manager also stated that with more resources, he would possibly choose to audit areas that were not currently being covered. He stated that this year unplanned audits were carried out on the Royal Pavilion and the Brighton Centre and historically these had occurred more regularly.

64.3    The Executive Director, Finance & Resources stated that a review of audit days was undertaken. He confirmed that this indicated that the number of audit days were quite close to the minimum and he could not see any way at present of reducing this.

64.4    Dr Horne asked about the erosion of the number of auditing days and when these would be carried out since, in his opinion there seemed to have been a loss of detail on how these days should be allocated for the period 2019 / 20.   The Audit Manager replied that previously they had listed the detail of the audit days in order to be transparent and now they were trying to streamline the detail and use a bar chart on how these were delivered to each Directorate.

64.5    Dr Horne also asked about how these days would be aligned to the Strategic risk register, which he felt was important. The Audit Manager replied that there was a shrinkage in the coverage of corporate risks but as stated in the risk management report under the third line of defence these are mapped and would be presented at the financial year end. Russell Banks, Chief Internal Auditor stated that a number of different audits covered those Directorates, citing the example of the Budget Management audit which cut across all of those services.

64.6    RESOLVED: That the Committee approved the Internal Audit Strategy and Annual Audit Plan for 2019 / 20, subject to the identification of any areas for further consultation, or the potential addition or deletion of reviews currently included in the plan.