The Chief Internal Auditor presented a report which identified and evaluated the performance of the Internal Audit section. It included details of issues that had arisen from the actual work undertaken during the period 1 August to 31 October 2014 and provided specific details of five items of note, which were brought to the attention of the Committee:

·  Financial Systems

·  Commissioning

·  Performance Planning and Management

·  Fraud Awareness Week

·  Information Governance

The Chief Internal Auditor provided details of outstanding Audit recommendations that had not currently been implemented and he commented that all were RAG rated as ‘amber’, which indicated that progress was being made to address the issues identified. He also drew the Committee’s attention to developments within internal audit.

Responding to comments from Members, the Chief Internal Auditor stated that with regard to commissioning, work was currently ongoing and findings to date indicated that whilst there was no inference of impropriety against any Council officer there had been examples identified of inadequate control which needed to be corrected, and on a number of occasions the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules had been breached and these would be reported to the Committee in January.

He stated that as there were only a small number of contracts with non-compliance out of a considerable number this did not highlight corporate compliance as a significant issue. He acknowledged that the examples identified should not be happening. In respect of creditors, the three duplicate payments were for a relatively small amount and work was being undertaken with colleagues in creditors / payments to prevent this happening again and the section was looking to recover the monies. An update would be brought back to the next meeting and he had no concerns at this point about the Creditors / Payments Service meeting the December, 2014 deadline for action implementation.

With regard to the Single Person Council Tax Discount review a decision had been taken by the Council Tax Service to bring in an external firm to review the findings from the NFI exercise. It was intended that by January 2015 the exercise would have concluded and Internal Audit would be able to undertake a comprehensive follow up review, the outcome of which would be reported to Members via the regular update report.

The Chief Internal Auditor agreed to provide further detail in the ‘organisational impact’ column in the ‘Outstanding Audit Recommendations’ appendix to the report when it was shown that this was not applicable.

Luan Quirke, Lead Auditor, provided the Committee with more detail on the week long fraud awareness campaign that commenced on 17 November 2014. This coincided with International Fraud Awareness Week and the aim was to heighten awareness of staff to the problem and scale of fraud in the public sector. The team were looking to promote a public campaign in the future in conjunction with neighbouring Mersey region authorities; this could be along the lines of the ‘Spot the Cheater’ campaign, which Stoke-on-Trent City Council had successfully run.

Responding to comments from Members, the Chief Internal Auditor stated that the ‘Cheater’ campaign would be something officers would look at and that Members would be engaged in the process before any campaign was rolled out. They would take the lead from professionals within the field and ensure that any campaign had a localised emphasis which people could relate to.

With regard to a record of types of fraud, the Internal Audit section did have a significant database of material and in, ‘Protecting the Public Purse’. Mike Thomas commented that the National Fraud Investigation scheme would move to the Cabinet Office when the Audit Commission closed and comparative data would still be shared with local authorities.

Resolved – That the report be noted.