The Chief Internal Auditor presented the draft plan of work for Wirral Council’s Internal Audit Service for 2013/16.

The report indicated that there was a move to change to a three year strategic internal audit plan, the rationale behind this was to ensure that Internal Audit took a wider more strategic view of risk and to ensure that audit effort was utilised as efficiently and effectively as possible to mitigate risk in a changing environment. This was particularly important for Wirral Council at present as a significant number of reported control and governance issues were in evidence and required the attention of senior management as well as the many fundamental changes that are taking place regarding how services were to be delivered. The audit plan was designed to inform that process providing relevant assurance opinions on systems either in place or developing and providing direction assessments regarding actions required to implement the necessary improvements required.

The plan provided an overview of the assurance that would be obtained through each audit, the exact scopes of the audits would be agreed with Senior Management prior to commencement of the audit to ensure that the key current risks were being addressed.

The Draft Audit plan would be finalised following further consultation with officers by the 31st March 2012. This would be tabled at the Audit and Risk Management Committee in June 2013. The audit plan would remain flexible, and would be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure it was in line with emerging risks.

Resolved –That the report be noted and the Internal Audit Plan 2013/16 be endorsed.