PAPER B

 

Committee :   AUDIT AND PERFORMANCE COMMITTEE

 

Date :              10 OCTOBER 2006

 

Title :               INTERNAL AUDIT PROGRESS REPORT

 

                        REPORT OF THE CHIEF INTERNAL AUDITOR

 

 

PURPOSE

 

1.                  This report is to provide the Committee with information regarding internal audit’s progress in delivering the annual audit plan for 2006/07.

 

2.                  The Committee is invited to note the contents of the report and to seek clarification of any issues arising from the progress achieved to date.

 

BACKGROUND 

 

3.                  In keeping with good corporate governance practice, a Committee of elected members should have oversight of the activities of the Internal Audit Service for the purpose of monitoring Internal Audit’s performance, both in terms of the quality and quantity of its work. This report largely addresses the issue of quantity but with some qualitative data also provided to give a flavour of overall performance to date in this financial year.

 

4.                  To facilitate this process, attached as Appendix A is the annual audit plan for 2006/07 with the status of each planned audit indicated in the “status” column in Appendix A.  The numbers in the status column should be interpreted as follows:

 

1 indicates that the audit has been completed;

 

2 indicates that the audit is in progress;

 

3 indicates that the audit has not yet commenced.

 

 

5.                  The status indications reflect the progress achieved by the end of September 2006, which is the mid-way point in the financial year.

 

PROGRESS AGAINST THE PLAN TO DATE

 

6.                  The table below summarises the progress to date against the annual audit plan:

 

Corporate Objective

(Derived from Aim High)

Planned

Days

Completed

Audits –

Planned

Days

 

In Progress

Audits –

Planned

Days

Not Started

Audits –

Planned

Days

2.3.1 Regeneration

155

22

93

40

2.3.2 Health and well being

80

13

35

32

2.3.3 Safer communities

40

-

20

20

2.3.4 Outcomes for children

153

3

35

115

2.4.1 High performance

877

195

355

197

TOTAL

1175*

233

538

405

*N.B. This total excludes 130 days contingency.

 

7.                  From the table above it can be seen that:

 

20% of planned work has been completed;

 

46% of planned work is in progress;

 

34% of planned work has yet to commence.

 

Overall, we estimate that 38% of the plan has been achieved by the end of September. The rate of delivery of the plan will accelerate during the rest of the year as new members of staff advance through their learning curves and hence become more productive. By way of comparison, the outturn for the financial year 2005/06 was 56% of planned work achieved.

 

8.                  The audit plan has been slightly modified to reflect changing priorities during the year and amended projects are shown in bold in appendix A.

 

9.                  The lack of progress in outcomes for children is due to the long term sickness absence of the lead auditor for this area due to injury in a road traffic accident.  This officer is now fit and inroads will now be made into the backlog of work in this area.

 

10.             The ICT audit plan has also been modified to take account of the rapidly changing environment and developing corporate priorities such as the new performance management system.

 

11.             Overall, we expect to achieve at least 85% of the planned programme of work by the end of the financial year.

 

QUALITY PERFORMANCE MEASURES

 

12.              Other performance measures include the number of recommendations accepted by management as a proportion of all recommendations made. To date this year we have made 70 recommendations all of which have been accepted by management.

 

13.             We routinely obtain feedback from clients as to the quality of the audit product from their perspective. We measure client satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 4, 0 being poor and 4 being excellent. The objective is to achieve an overall average score of at least 3 which represents “good”. The current average score is 3.18 which is in line with expectations. The final figure for 2005/06 financial year was 3.25.

  

FINANCIAL, LEGAL, CRIME AND DISORDER IMPLICATIONS

 

There are no significant financial or legal implications of this report, given that it is a progress report on the Internal Audit function. The Committee is reminded that the Council is required by statute (the Accounts and Audit Regulations) to have an adequate and effective Internal Audit function.

 

RELEVANT PLANS, POLICIES, STRATEGIES AND PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

 

None.

 

CONSULTATION PROCESSES

 

None.

 

BACKGROUND PAPERS USED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS REPORT

 

Audit files

 

Contact Point :           Ged Richardson – ext 3683

 

 

APPENDIX A

 

INTERNAL AUDIT PLAN 2006/07