Transcript

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Panel of the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Please be advised that this meeting will be recorded and posted on the Council's YouTube channel. Could all those speaking ensure you switch on your microphone before addressing the meeting and remember to switch it off when you've finished speaking? I think it just might be useful to introduce ourselves. We've got Councillor Williams and Councillor Hartley with us. We are expecting councillors Olegbeimi, Sullivan and May, but they're not here yet. Would officers like to introduce themselves? Hello, I'm Hitesh Chalapara, AD Finance. So, I'm Julian Gokul, Treasury and Pensions Officer. Obviously, I haven't got a badge here in front of me. I'm Brenda Costello, Assistant Director of Resources. I'm Kirsty Widdies, Senior Manager, House Finance. Melanie Franklin, Head of Service for Personal Support and House Financial Services. Well, could I thank all colleagues for coming, particularly our Health and Adults Services colleagues. It has been requested that, because we have the officers here following the internal audit review on that service, which is in Item 8, that we take Item 8 before Items 5, 6 and 7. Are members happy to do that? So, those officers can go home or go out for the evening, whatever you intend to do. Right, to move to the full items on the agenda then. Apologies for absence. I've received apologies from our external appointee, Dr. Susan Blackall, and also apologies from the Cabinet Member, Councillor Denise Highland. Are there any further apologies from members? No. There is no urgent business I've been notified of. Three declarations of interest. Does any member have any personal or financial interest to declare on any items on the agenda? No. Okay, thank you very much. Minutes. The minutes have been circulated. Are members happy to agree the minutes of the last meeting? They agree? Thank you. I shall sign those. So, then we move to Item 8, as agreed. And that is the report on internal audit and anti-fraud performance report for the last six months, from April to September 24. And, Brendan, are you introducing this report? Thank you. Yep, that's fine, Chair. Apologies in advance. I've got myself quite a few notes to go through, just to make sure I don't forget anything. This is the standard report in relation to the delivery of the internal audit plan and the anti-fraud work undertaken by internal audit for a quarter to this year. And I'm just going to very quickly whiz through a few points in there, if I may. Achieval of the audit plan with 37% of the plan members or long-standing members will know it's not unusual to be slightly behind at that time of the year. We keep some of the audit work is deliberately held back to a quarter three and quarter four, so we can encapsulate most of the year as part of the review. Table one shows we are above target in two of the performance indicators, which is good news. We're slightly behind on the other two. That's still quite positive, in my view, given we've had some resource issues, which I think members have been made aware of previously. With regards to some of the internal audit statistics in there, Chair, I'd like to apologise to yourself and members, because I know you requested previously that we provided some of those statistics in a slightly different format. I'll set them out differently for you. You'll have to trust me. I have done that. But I didn't want to include in the report without letting members see it, first of all, to make sure they were happy with that. So what I'll do after the meeting, if I may, if it's okay, I'll circulate the figures again that are in this report, but in the different style and the different format that you requested, just to make sure that you're all happy for that. And if you're happy with that, obviously that will be the format going forward for future reports. There's one limited assurance review where we undertook a follow-up review and as requested again by yourself, Chair, instead of just me giving you the summary and having officers attend the meeting, we've actually given you the action plan itself. So that would be the document that internal audit would share with officers. It would be a working document, so we would put the recommendations in there. We would allocate that to a member of staff to deal with. And then the service area would provide their comments at the far end of that document to tell you where they are, whether it's either implemented or why it's not implemented, et cetera. You'll have to bear in mind that this represents the position at quarter two. So you'll see on that document, which I think is Appendix D, there's a number of recommendations. We'll have an implementation date of October 24. That would be because obviously the report refers to quarter two and we haven't yet got round to going back to the service to see if those dates or to see if those recommendations have been fully implemented. Internal audit will be following up. I suspect not in this calendar year, but probably the early part of next calendar year. We'll be looking to revisit to follow up on those. I'm sorry, officers are here if there's any questions that arise from that appendix. The second half of the report relates to our anti-fraud work. We still carry out the investigations in all of those areas identified. What the report doesn't say is that there's some long-standing cases that are finally reaching court dates. So there'll be some other results before the end of the financial year. And the only other thing I probably should highlight is members may notice there's been a slight increase in the volume of blue badge referrals that we're investigating. And again, I know we're talking about quarter two, but I just would flag up that we're currently in the midst of a small proactive exercise. So I fully expect those numbers of blue badge referrals to increase accordingly as we go through the year. And that's it really, Chair. Happy to take any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Costello. So if firstly we can, we'll come back on to the limited assurance report on financial protection appointeeship. Are there any questions to Brendan in relation to the substance of the report apart from that item? Councillor Hartley. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for bringing the further information on the area of limited assurance. That's very helpful and I'm sure we'll get on to that. In terms of the moderate assurance levels, I'm looking at Appendix C. Complaints, commercial waste, mental health care packages, residential care provision, energy administration and SEND. And we've got original assurance levels, follow-up reports and then revised assurance levels, all sort of moderate to moderate. Could you just sort of put this in context for us? What happens next, without specifics, more of a process thing, what happens next where we've got a moderate assurance that's kind of without the level of improvement that we would want to see? Could you just explain the process for us? Yeah, I'll try. I think you may recall, it would have been several meetings ago, that the issues or the way that we provide the assurance levels, most reviews will be moderate as a result in nature. So, the focus would be obviously, it's quite difficult to get a high level of assurance, I think that's probably fair to say. And again, it's not so difficult to get a low, certainly difficult to get a none, but most things would go to moderate. So, there wouldn't be much of a process involved in this, there would be moderate. If it's an area that generates, or area that comes up on our risk register, so to speak, or the way that we formulate the audit plan, it would still say in the two-year or the three-year cycle, but we would look at perhaps a different area that comes under that. So, I'm trying to think of the example, for example, benefits. Benefits, we would, or housing benefits, we would review that every year and have done for every year. It's one of our material systems. But each year, we would look at a different particular area, unless there was something that was flagged up. So, unless we got something that said limited or none, it would be moderate that year. We might move on and look at something else for the other year to see if there's anything there. And then the moderate assurance, it might be in five years' time or four years' time, we would come back and look at that area again. I'm feeling I'm not really explaining myself very well. No, no, you are. That's helpful. And, I mean, it's really about the, yes, the bar that we're setting is why I'm kind of interested in it. So, the definition of moderate includes management will need to take appropriate action to address the areas of weakness identified to ensure best practice. And I suppose, I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, shouldn't our aim be high for everything? I mean, it's one of those goals that it's almost unhelpful to say, maybe, because, you know, it's not realistic because of prioritization and resources and things. But what I'm trying to get a sense of is, I think what I understand from your answer is, you get a moderate assurance, there's a follow-up report, you may look at a particular sort of sub-area or an aspect, and management does some work to improve on that based on the recommendations. It still comes back in moderate, but from your view, it's kind of, it's a greater, but, you know, within moderate, there's sort of gradations. Is there a sort of trajectory for all of these to get to high? Is that the goal? Or are we satisfied with moderate, keep coming back, but as long as there's an improvement curve? And now I'm not putting my question very well, but do you see what I'm trying to get through? I wouldn't want anybody to have the impression that moderate is enough, because continuous improvement is the name of the game, isn't it? Yeah, that's a very good point. It might be useful, based on Councillor Hartley's question, I mean, I think that previously you'd said moderate is quite, is basically good, but still room for improvement. So, it just might be useful to get some longitudinal analysis of reviews to see how, what the trend line is in different service areas that are up to a returnal audit review. So, rather, like when you get an Ofsted or a CQC report, it will say what previous inspection. It might be useful to have some comparators, so to know what the previous internal audit found, and what the trend line is as well. Okay, I should take that on board. I think I had several answers whizzing through my head there. No, no, no, it's fine. I think if I was on the receiving end of an internal audit report that said moderate, I wouldn't be happy, because you're quite right, because moderate doesn't really sound good. But we did have, we had different categorisations previously, and we had problems with those as well, because you then said, well, you know, where do you draw the lines to what fits into which category? So, I would accept the criticism that the moderate is quite catch-all, but then it becomes difficult trying to manage forwards to how you change those level of assurances, whether you go one, two, three, four, five. Clearly, the aim is to be, to get a high level of assurance in everything. In some areas, that's really difficult to do, because you're always going to have problems. Well, if I could perhaps come in on that, I fully appreciate that, but you've confirmed, you know, the nub of the question, which is we are aiming for a high, and more importantly, we're aiming for improvement across the board. I definitely endorse your suggestion, Chair. I think what I would appreciate as a panel member is seeing or somehow kind of understanding the improvement curve, if there is one, within moderate. And, obviously, more importantly, if there is a trend going the other way, but it's not enough to slip down a level below moderate, to kind of non, or to limited, rather, we'd want to know about that too as a panel. I just think, yeah, if that's possible, and I appreciate that, it may not be, but perhaps just something to investigate. Yeah, I'm happy to try and do my best and bring that back, certainly. Thanks. In fact, if you look at the reports that are listed this evening, on Appendix C, you'll see there's the original assurance level, and then the revised assurance level in the following a follow-up report, which generally is about a year or a year later. That varies the time. Are there any other questions to the officer in relation to the main part of the report? And then we'll move on to financial protection. Can we thank Brendan, particularly, obviously, on the productivity and the level of completion of the reports? It's good. I'm glad to see a service report on productivity levels. And we look forward to the tracking, also, of the implementations by management of previous recommendations from internal audit reviews. So, if we turn to the financial protection of pointyship, do you want to say anything particularly about this review and the follow-on? I'm looking particularly here at the headline to Appendix D, which shows that not many of the original audit recommendations have been implemented. But you've done a further review. So, it would be just useful to try and put some colour, if you like, on what the particular issues and challenges are within that service from your perspective. And then we'll hear from the officers that are running that service. I think it would probably be unfair for me to comment that. That's really for the officers to comment. The only thing I would say, and I sort of trailed in the introduction there, is that you'll see that where there were seven high-priority recommendations made and only two have been implemented. Well, then, clearly, it's very difficult for internal audit to deviate from any other assurance level other than limited, because there's no evidence that the recommendations have been implemented. But having said that, I would remind members again that this refers to work that was undertaken in quarter two. So, there are recommendations that are implemented. And there's also recommendations that are scheduled to be completed in October 24. Now, internal audit haven't yet gone back to the service to see whether those recommendations have been implemented. Now, clearly, if they have, and they've been, and audit tests that, and they can see that the recommendations have been implemented, then it's unlikely that the current level assurance is going to remain at limited. So, Kirsty or Melanie, do you want to add anything to the implementation of the recommendations from the internal audit reports? I know it's a difficult and complex area. Are there questions from members on this report? Councillor Williams. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the report. I just wondered, you mentioned the restructure. Are you, because we see this across the council, are you up to full strength now as teams, or do you still have vacant heads? Yeah, so in January, and I think there's two members, so we increased the capacity of the team to 10 full-time. So, they're team now. Yes, Councillor May. Thank you, Chair. Can I ask what the mental capacity training entails? It was going... Yes, so it was a recommendation from the APG, because they also did an audit on us, and they recommended that all the staff, but it doesn't mean they know what they want. Can you expand on that a little bit more? I mean, what... Did they do tasks? Did they have breakout sessions? I mean, was it done as a whole team? Because mental capacity is quite important. So, yes, they were trained on the five principles, going through what that looks like, and examples. I haven't got them in front of me, I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's putting the person first, their best interest. Oh, gosh, I've got a figure off the top of my head. Sorry, put me on the spot now. But, yeah. If you don't know, can you let us know, please? Yes, I can send them. Not just to me, but to the whole... Of course, that's no problem at all. But, yes, they did give examples on what that looks like. They did have discussions on what they currently do, and what things they can look to improve in when they're looking at that. And they've also had court of protection training on what the reports look like, what they should be sending back if they're not appropriate. So, there is lots of training going on, and that will carry on. And there's also an APAD appointeeship accreditation that we're putting the whole team through. What's that, guys? So, word for word. So, it's the Association of Public Authority Deputieship, and they do accreditation, which takes approximately six months to complete. So, we're putting a few members of the team on it at a time because, obviously, we have to free up time for them to attend the lessons and the courses. But, yes, it's just teach them better practice, et cetera. Could I just ask, I'm just trying to get a sense of how large this service is. How many people are there that are under financial protection? So, we had a waiting list, and we've just cleared that. I think there was 35 on our waiting list because of the shortboard, 190, well, 9,500. Is that broadly in line with other boroughs per head of population? Yeah, the APAD, the Association of Deputies, is the best practice is to have 50 clients each so that, you know, they deal with everything, like you deal with your own finances, paying all your bills. So, they've recommended that each member of staff should be 50, and that's what the staff were dealing with, 80, 90 people, and it was far too many. And these would be people without mental, I'm thinking of my mother here because I've got, I have responsibility for her finances. But, as, you know, many family members do, but these would be people that don't have a, they don't have a family member that's been appointed by the Office of Guardians to be responsible. So, therefore, it falls on the local authority to offer that financial protection if they haven't got mental capacity themselves and there's no one else they've appointed as a guardian, then, as a financial guardian, then it falls to the local authority, and that's your role. Yeah, and sometimes it's due to safeguarding against family members as well, so. That's very, very important work. And have you benchmarked, sorry, did you have, I'm just going to ask, have you benchmarked our performance and operations against other local authorities? Yes, so I recently attended a meeting, sorry, with the other local authorities, management, and we did have discussions about workload, prioritising, how many, and we was quite low in terms, regards to staffing levels, which obviously now we've addressed and come January we should be fully staffed and we are in line with the other boroughs. Thank you. Councillor Williams, sorry. Thanks, Chair. Two questions, really, because it's fascinating to learn about the service. Do we recover costs from the clients for the service or does it come out of a centralised budget just to help me and others at home understand? And then, secondly, is it hard to find people to recruit? Is there quite a high, what qualifications do you need to do the role, I suppose? So we do recover costs. They're actually set down by the Court of Protection. So if we're deputy, then there's set rules, lots of rules, depending on what capital they have and things like that. And they address that each year. They increase it. Errors on those, so this new system we're getting is going to hopefully maximise our income. Appointeeships, we're going to look at addressing that because other councils now have started to charge for that, whereas we currently do not. So that's people that are on, you know, they haven't got savings, so we're seeing look what other boroughs do, but we will be addressing that. To get staff, do you want to? As we have recently recruited, we have found it quite difficult. One reason is because to have the background in this, they usually already work for the local government and other organisations like ourselves. There isn't no qualifications as such. It is more experience because it is something you really need to learn on the job. But we do look at people that have worked with these client groups, with mental health and other things. Councillor May. Thank you, Chair. Do you take on recruits that you can then train up that work alongside you? Because otherwise, if you sort of like learn on the job, if you've not done it before, there's no way of you actually getting into the post. Yeah, just recently, we lost one of our valued members. They started as an apprenticeship with us about 14 years ago and they obviously worked their way up and they've actually moved to a solicitor now that do the same role. So, yeah. Obviously, the people we've got, some have come from internal other departments and some have come from other boroughs doing the same job. But, yeah, we're quite open to have apprentices. Thank you. All right. I see no further questions. So, could I, I mean, thank you very much and wish you all the best in improving the level of assurance and meeting all the recommendations. And thank you for the efforts that you've made so far to properly staff the service and get things up to speed. So, thank you very much for your time this evening. You're welcome to stay for the rest if you wish. Thank you. So, thank you. So, if there are no, are there any further comments that members have on the whole report or that element of the report? In which case, are members happy to note the report in item eight? Thank you very much. So, we revert back to item five, which is the self-assessment and evaluation. Now, you will remember at our first meeting of the municipal year, this was circulated circulated and we deferred it so we could all have a look at the self-evaluation. And various things were circulated. A draft was done by Brendan and his team and Dr. Blackall and myself made some suggestions and amendments. But there was no input, sadly, from other members. It went around twice. But you have now this document in front of you as with Dr. Blackall and my amendments incorporated in. And you've had a chance to read this. So, I mean, I'm happy. I mean, we don't want to look as if we're perfect because we're not. I think we have a lot of learning points still as an audit and risk management panel. And there are some key changes that we're looking to make which I hope will improve our compliance with the SIP for Code of Practice, one of which we've discussed in terms of internal audit but also private meetings with the external auditor and doing some deep dive reviews as well. But are there any other comments that members have on this self-review? this self-assessment and evaluation? I ought to ask, firstly, Brendan, did you want to say anything more on the paper and the assessment? Not really, Chair. I mean, all I would say is, I mean, from my point of view, I was just asking whether you agree with the recommendations. I've got to be careful of that because I know it's a panel rather than a committee. But I think I am asking you whether you're happy with the improvement actions that are in Appendix 5. And if you are, then I'll go away and formulate a formal action plan and come back to the next meeting in January with that action plan and with a progress report of where we are and what we need to do, really. So, Brendan's referred us to page 27, which has got the recommendations. Councillor Hartley. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to you and Dr Blackhall for contributing to this in a way that others of us didn't. And I think the work that you've done and Brendan has done has presented a good comprehensive view of, you know, that certainly didn't contain any surprises. The only suggestion I had on seeing the final product is that obviously full council agreed our recommendation to recruit a second independent member. And even though that's not in response to this evaluation, I wonder whether it would be politic to add it to the list of recommendations because it is a measure that we've already agreed that as a panel will improve our effectiveness and just for completeness, perhaps we should include it in the list for belt and braces. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. I won't say this often but completely agree with everything Councillor Hartley said there. I think I would want to echo my thanks to you and Dr Blackhall as well and Brendan for completing this where we couldn't step in. I think you've covered everything and as Councillor Hartley said, I think we should definitely work in the external appointment. I was surprised not to see that there actually. I agree with that and that's a slight oversight we need to proceed with identifying and trying to find a second independent member. With that addition to the recommendations then, are members happy to note this report? Agree? Thank you. So we can move then to item six which is a treasury management and capital strategy. The clerk has a comment on an error, I think. Sorry, members are advised there is an error at the beginning of the report. Decisions 1.4 and 1.5 should not appear on the report. That's from the scrutiny template not relevant to this panel. This item, of course, goes on to Cabinet and Council tomorrow. Thank you. So, and we're invited to make any comments for full council? We can if we wish. We wish to. Yeah. Okay. Could I ask, I think both Hitesh Jalapara and Julian Gokul are presenting on this. Is that right? Thank you, Chair. I'm just going to make a few comments. So this is a regular quarter two report in relation to the media position for treasury capital. The report sets out the council's debt position, the council's capital and financial position and also he's got forecasts for interest rates going forward based on the position as known at the time of writing the report. Obviously, that's changed now. Also sets out the total deposits or investment position. We also have the prudential indicators in the appendix which are largely borrowing indicators in relation to disposal of premises at Augsmear Road. That's all I'm planning to say as we have for introduction, Chair. And both Julian and I are happy to assist the committee with any questions. Anything to add, Julian? No, Chair. Councillor Hyland, did you have anything to say on this report? No, Chair. Thank you. I did have a few questions. I've been through the report but I'll open it to colleagues first. Councillor Hartley. I just had one question, thank you, Chair, which was, I just think, because of the importance of treasury management, a question I've asked kind of periodically is do we have enough resource to do officers feel we have enough resource focused on treasury management given its importance and it feels appropriate that the panel keeps sort of dip testing that, Chair. If I could put that question to officers. Chair, I'm happy to take that question. So it's one of the things for the reasons you set out we always keep a close eye on. So for example, only last week I had a conversation with Julian about the resourcing level in terms of is it adequate, sufficient and reliable and at this point in time we felt it is but if that position were to change if I felt or Julian felt otherwise we'd certainly be having a conversation with the council's statutory sectional foreign officer. Thank you. Thank you. So there are no other questions from members. My questions. So in one three that's followed through in section 13 on the leasehold disposal of what we call the PDC professional development centre I'm just wondering is this caught in by the academy's legislation that we have to have a new 125 year lease and do we have any legal alternative to that that would better sweat the asset and protect our position? So this is something that's been looked at thoroughly by our director of Regen and also your point you also made it earlier I think some correspondence about peppercorn rent as well that's what we looked at around best consideration and officers are satisfied it is best consideration and the lease that we have with the DFE is a standard lease which requires a peppercorn but in this provision does outweigh the costs Have we calculated what the revenue implications would be? Presumably there's a positive revenue implication in terms of SCND is there? In that we would be sending fewer people out to specialist schools at a borough and so forth? That certainly would have been taken into account in part of the business case So moving on the I just yes I was looking at the debt and there's quite a significant increase in the PWLB but there's also a temporary loan at 5% which is above base rate and of 10 million and just I mean it's explained slightly in the narrative but it's quite a jump in our total debt and I just wonder if you could explain just explain that and also in 5-2 on interest rates it says that the council's treasury advisors and officers will continue to regularly monitor the LOBO's portfolio to assess the probability of loans being called this is increased in line with the Bank of England rapid increase rates increase over the last year well over the last year Bank of England base rate has gone down from 5.25 in August 23 to 4.75 last month it might have gone up years prior to that but the last year it's what it says the 5-2 it's actually the base rate has gone down so that doesn't ring true that particular sentence thank you chair I'm happy to answer that question so just in the first part around the increase in PWL will be boring as the chair will remember on the training session we had from our treasury advisor link we talk about a CFR position so the capital finance requirement so these are for capital projects in terms of Greenwich build and other capital project that's been approved so that borne is in support of that CFR so this year we've got increase in the CFR position so we need to go out and borrow to support that what we have done this year because rates continue to be high we've take temporary loans this is like local to local just temporary basis hence why the rate is much higher but it's just for a short period of time before we go to PWLB to borrow just picking up on your second question in terms of the LOBOs yes chair you're absolutely correct I think that's probably an area reflecting loss over the next financial year when the increase happens so I think what it's saying here is that the LOBOs provider effectively as rates goes up they will want to call that LOBO because effectively they can go out and invest at a higher return for what it currently have for us so one of the things we monitoring those calls when they're due also as well what we've got to bear in mind it's not just about interest rates it's about the business case for those counterparties so some of them might be refinancing the loan books I want to get rid of those no bows so us and our treasury advisors paying careful attention when those is due to be called just to see the probability of it so thank you very much for that yes I understand that so would it be right to take that remove that sentence about this has increased in line with Bank of England rapid interest rates or at least change it so it's accurate yes yes that's correct we can say over the last few years when the bank have started to increase there was a sharp increase 0.25 to 5.25 but since August 23 it's turned and come down slightly yeah still elevated yeah that's correct yeah yeah okay so I was going to come on to the CFR which is going to pass a billion pounds almost 1.1 billion by next March and I mean I'm just to ask your professional view of whether you know assuming that interest rates do come down and I know we've got to take a 40 year view on this but are you confident that we're not overstretched in terms of our CFR and we will be able to repay that with all the new rent and so forth that we'll be getting and the sweating of our assets and so forth first before Julian comes in so quite rightly I mean that is absolutely good question to ask officers and one of the things we do we are keeping this under regular review so it's not just looked at once here it's looked at on a more frequent basis at least every quarter but Julian may wish to add further to that yeah thank you yeah yeah just just want to add further to that obviously the officer in the section 151 officer take advice from our treasury advisors when we do borrowing so we do look over the long term as you said chair and if we see those rates elevated then we look at what we can do in the short term before we go refinance that over a long term basis so we lock in those higher which we need to remember which is over 3 billion isn't it yeah okay are there any questions from other members of the panel right okay well with the change that technical thing in 5-2 are we happy to to note that report yep agreed to note that report thank you so that brings us to item 7 our last item this evening global internal audit standards which sounds really fascinating so we need to we've received a need to note or not note as the case may be the new global internal audit standards for 2024 which become mandatory from the next municipal year Brendan would you like to explain yes I'm just I'm still upset with your interesting comment there it's again the report as what it says it's just to advise members of the global standards that are coming into effect are fairly comfortable most of the requirements are already in place members will be aware that it wasn't that long ago that we went we underwent an independent assessment against the public sector internal audit standards and much of that is in place in the global standards we also did an internal assessment last year which again I think we brought back to the panel members we'll conduct another internal assessment in the next few weeks or the next month or so we'll identify any potential shortcomings or concerns in relation to these new standards and I'll be certain to report back to members at a later meeting alongside any required actions or a formal action plan and let you know where we are which ones we meet or if they're anywhere we need to take some compensatory action really questions from members councillor Hartley thank you chair thank you Brendan I'm reading the report in full at 4.2 I just interpreted this as a pitch from Brendan for his job title to change to chief order executive which I thought would be well made and I'm sure supported by the panel my question was just about the delay it mentions about the delay from January to April for UK implementation of the new standards can we infer from that most of the public sector isn't you know it needs more time to adapt its practices in internal audit and by implication are we further along than other local authorities would you say if you're confident that we're pretty much already there I still need to get the qualification that's the first thing I should say to be honest you I don't know why the delay is I mean things tend to work slowly we've got past the stage where you can complain about COVID and delays about all the reviews and all those other sort of stuff so I generally don't know why the only thing that and again perhaps wrongly the only thing I do that sort of stuff thank you then you answered my second question about the qualification so I can see that that's in scope for this as well thank Jess who you know from previously I've sort of tasked Jess with going through that to see where we are with that but certainly once I come back with the report hopefully for the next meeting I'll flag that up to you Councillor Hartley Thank you Chair I mean reading the appendices there's a lot of detail in there but one of the starting points of the new standards are this emphasis on communication and is the internal audit function communicating well with the rest of the organisation so perhaps if the panel were looking for something to focus on as a result of the new standards that might be something that we choose to focus on chair because that's from the limited knowledge I have from just reading this report it seems to be that's a big part of the thrust of the change that's been made to the global standards so I think we do ask about that but perhaps not in a sort of focus specific way and maybe we should do that in the future I think that's right so if we look at page 63 the first of the yellow pages it says we'd recommend three tools use the minimum for all audit committees in order to develop understanding of the new global internal audit standards so we've got to watch an IIA questions with Anthony we've got to deliver the 30 minute PowerPoint presentation provided to the audit committee and read domain three so are those items you think Brendan that we need to factor into our program and maybe have a session before the next meeting sorry I'm struggling to find that on the copy I've got in front of me potentially yes I mean the only thing I was just going to answer Councillor Hartley's point earlier if you remember with regards to communication we did have a conversation two maybe three panels ago with regards to failure to respond to internal audit those sort of things so it would tag on nicely to that I guess if that was something that you wanted to concentrate on I'm sorry I can't find sorry I haven't got the same page set out as you've got in your document I think I'm looking at online this this is the first page of item 7 appendix a it's a chartered institute of internal auditors audit committee guidance and toolkit which is really what we need to read isn't it yes I think what I would say is that when we go through and going back to the last item when we go through the self assessment and we're looking through the action planes these will be part of the things that will feed into the action plan so whilst the action plan that I showed you earlier or as the appendix previously that's fairly high level what myself and Vivian will do was go through and break down that and then try and provide some actual items that we can do and that we can show or demonstrate that will actually confirm that we've taken that stage further so this will be one of the things that we would recommend that the panel does and that would be one of the action plans and one of the things we can say we've implemented as a result of doing the action plan if that makes sense any other questions or comments from members on this so taking on board those recommendations we've got the action plan from the self assessment on our next agenda are people happy to note that report thank you very much in which case we've still got item 9 revised internal audit plan for 24 25 and Brendan over to you again yeah thank you chair it's pretty much does what it says in the tin really I know members have received an internal audit plan earlier on in the year I think it was July and members have been told previously we've recruited two members of staff as we recognised I think it was a PW recommendation that our resources need to be increased our internal audit resources need to be increased whilst I'm really pleased to say we've recruited two experienced auditors we've had to say goodbye to two of our long standing auditors and I think we might have mentioned that before one has had to take ill health retirement so in some ways we've sort of moved on but moved back again really so the plan is under constant review you can see there's been some revisions there's been some changes over the next few months we do have the option to buy in resources from a framework at a significantly reduced rate but that really is only a short term fix and will only help us in regards to specific audit topics so it's one of those areas I'll have to go back with the director again and see where we move on from here really thank you very much Brendan any questions two could I just ask on the percentages by directorate there on audit coverage 7-1 we just heard from health and adult services but the proposed planned level of audit coverage is very very low for health and adult services given it's about a third of our budget if not more than that and just wondered whether that was why that was is it because we covered them a lot recently it doesn't seem commensurate with our spend no it doesn't but there would be a variety of reasons for that some of those days in other areas finance and legal services for example they have the key systems key financial systems so those areas will have to be audited it's mandatory if we look at those similar to housing and safer community they will have been picked up in the risk assessment we've done as the areas that need to be reviewed the health and adults does look particularly low but then again there's a few follow-ups that we'll be doing in that area that aren't necessarily new reviews and again the only other thing I would say and it does sound like a bit of a cop is that's the plan but what invariably happens is when I give you the end of year report I show you these number of days and the percentages and then you see what we've actually done and there tends to be quite a bit of flux and quite a bit of change over that but no you're right it does look low thank you for explaining that no further questions for members oh councillor Hyland just quickly I wondered Brendan whether you told the committee or the panel about the public finance award I didn't I didn't chair I think the chair knows sorry I didn't councillor Hyland the reason being I'm sort of sticking to quarter two and that only happened was it Tuesday last week I think but yeah okay so maybe under if you'd accept under AOB okay so our before we move to AOB the members happy to note this report and under any other business can we congratulate you on winning the public finance award maybe you could just tell us a bit about it yeah is it is it wrong for me to say I was surprised to win it that was the thing that was the thing really it was public finance awards public finance qualification the award was for I can't remember that's quite long I think it was outstanding fraud prevention detection and recovery there were eight shortlisted entries on the evening and eight's quite a lot normally it's normally only four there were a few from the there was one if I'm being honest DWP HMRC joint working sort of thing and I do like a little bet now and again and that would have been my favourite to win it I think the other thing if I hadn't been part of the award or had an entry there the one I would have liked to have seen win I think was the London Boroughs Fraud Investigators Group because there's some individuals there have done an awful lot of work on and you've heard me say it before the polygamous working so they've tried to get every London borough to put their recruitment details employee details agency details in there so we can pick up matches where you've got individuals working at one local authority either agency or full time part time but also working for another local authority so if we hadn't have won it I would have liked that to have won it race basically I lost track of who was the entries they announced internal or an anti-fraud and I'm ashamed to say I was still sat on my seat I didn't realise we'd won it it was only when I saw the photograph come up that I knew we'd won it so and I'd like to say we had a really good evening but it was very expensive evening we didn't really partake at all of any sort of liquid etc etc but no it was a nice award to win and I'd say we did well I was a little surprised many congratulations and that is a vote of confidence in our work on fraud prevention and for the whole team I think we need to call for an immediate and urgent internal audit on admirable but undue modesty in the internal audit team and just to make that point and associate all of us with your remarks and congratulations thank you right and presumably Councillor Highland you'll be marking it tomorrow evening at the council meeting well actually I'm not sure I will because of the pre-election period so we've had to use a council spokesperson thank you well thank you very much and if no further business have a safe journey home everyone and see some of you tomorrow evening thank you Thank you.