Agenda item

To receive the report.

The Committee received the report from officers on the work of the Internal Audit team during the period 30 June to 28 September 2014. The Internal Audit & Corporate Risk Manager reported that the team currently had one vacancy as an auditor had been seconded to undertake fraud work. Additionally a second member of the team commenced maternity leave in October 2014. The result of thIs was that as at the end of September there was a shortfall of 100 days in the time required to deliver the 2014/15 work plan. Due to the restructure there were no plans to address this by employing agency workers, but the shortfall would be closely monitored and other options to reduce the shortfall would be considered and implemented.

Officers advised that by the end of September 12 assignments had been completed with eight in progress. Work had also been undertaken to review Public Health expenditure in order to give the Chief Executive an assurance for the sign off of the Public Health Grant for 2013/14.

The tale below details the final reports issued in quarter 2:

Seven risk based systems audit were nearing completion as was one school audit.

Officers also provided details of changes to the approved 2014/15 audit Plan and an update on outstanding recommendations.

The Committee sought clarification on a number of the audit reports.

Firstly the committee expressed concern that there were no agreements in place at MyPlace for the replacement of equipment being used within MyPlace. Officers agreed to take this away and look at ways of remedying this potential problem.

Secondly the Committee expressed concern that in some areas only two people were involved in the BACS process. Whilst management had made arrangements to ensure both staff were not on leave at the same time, there were no safeguards against unplanned absences. The audit report concluded that the lack of business continuity arrangements in place was sufficient to put system objectives at risk. The Committee supported this conclusion.

The final area identified by the Committee related to the audit of Gas Safety Regulations – Home Ownership. Back in 2012 an executive decision had been taken that leaseholders of council housing properties would be required to provide an annual gas safety certificate. 

At the start of the review there were 2,315 leasehold properties. On initial testing audit had found that eight out of 40 gas safety certificates were not located on the computer file. A further had been located during the audit and four were to be retrieved from Iron Mountain. The remaining two could not be located at the time of the audit.

The deadline for the receipt of all gas certificates had been July 2014. At the end of July 1,092 had still not been received,

The Committee expressed concern that Homeownership did not have sufficient resources to chase up the outstanding certificates.

The Committee noted the report.