The Chief Internal Auditor presented the draft plan of work for Wirral Council’s Internal Audit Service for 2012/2013. However, the Service was currently the subject of an external review and he commented that following the outcome of this and any subsequent changes in the structure of the service, alterations may be required to be made to the planned areas of work. In addition to this, and as part of the routine annual process a number of meetings were currently taking place with Chief Officers and their management teams to identify the current and emerging risks and confirm the accuracy of risk registers. This was an essential part of the planning process to ensure that risks to objectives being achieved in their respective service areas were identified and audit work programmes formulated to assess the adequacy of controls in those areas. He indicated that regular reports on this would be presented to the Committee in due course, identifying any necessary changes to the Audit Plan as they arose.

He commented that the Internal Audit Plan was focused on reviewing the critical areas and including those issues identified by Chief Officers and in recent external reports, in order to provide assurances to the Chief Executive and the Leader of the Council who were jointly required to sign the Annual Governance Statement. The Plan amounted to a total planned resource of 2787 audit days, of which 2437 days would support the provision of the annual assurance opinion on the effectiveness of the Council’s control systems and the Annual Governance Statement.

In response to a question from a Member as to whether auditors undertook work to ensure that policy decisions were implemented, the Chief Internal Auditor indicated that compliance testing was carried out across the Authority to ensure that control environments and processes were in place.

Resolved – That the report be noted and the Internal Audit Annual Plan 2012/2013 be endorsed.