Transcript

Good evening, everyone. I'm Mafida Bustin. I'm a councillor in Island Gardens and chair of the audit committee. Welcome to tonight's extraordinary audit committee meeting. This meeting is being webcast. I am going to go around the room and ask people to introduce themselves and I'll start off by asking the people in the room to introduce themselves and then I will go online. When you're introducing yourselves, please could you say whether you have any declarations of interest as well? And for the record, I don't have any declarations of interest. I'm going to start to my right, please. Hello, I'm Jill Bailey from Legal. Okay, we will go the other way around whilst the microphones are charging. So if I start with Councillor Francis, please. Councillor Mark Francis from Bowie Eastwood. No declarations. My councillor, I mean Ali Bowie. Ah, hello everyone. Councillor Harun Miah, Shedul Wad. Asan Khan, Corporate Head of Financial and Technical Accounting. Abdul Razak Asim, Director of Finance. No declarations. Steve Reddy, Corbida. Supporting audit committee this evening. And if I may ask people online to introduce themselves. So I'll start with council officers, please. So Simon, would you like to introduce yourself? Good evening, Chair. I'm Simon Baxter, Director of Community Thinking. Karen, would you like to go next? Yes, I'm Karen Swift. I'm the Director of Housing Strategy, Policy, Regulatory Assurance. I'm here for David Joyce, the Corporate Director, who's on leave today. Thank you. And could I go to EY, please? Maybe Stephen? Good evening. Stephen Reid from EY, the Council's appointed external auditor. And Clark from EY as well. Thank you. And then, Kim, would you like to introduce yourself? Yes, good evening. Kim Bromley-Gerry, Ministerial Envoy. And I think we have William Smith. I'm not sure where from. Yeah, good evening. Yeah, William Smith from PDBC. Great. Thank you all for joining. Apologies, Councillor. I forgot to add. I received that email as well. Thank you. Thank you. I think we can discuss that email in the restricted part of the meeting. Thank you. Farhana, have we received any apologies? No, Chair. No apologies. Julie? I just want to say, whether you're going to, Chair, because I know he's written to you. I'm not able to make it this evening. But I also am his deputy, so if I can assist, I will. Thank you, Julie. Yes, if we could note his apologies. I think that's important. Okay, declarations of interest, I think, have been covered. And then we will move on to Agenda Item 2, which is Auditor's Items for Consideration. But I don't think we have any. No, so we'll move on to Item 3, which is 3.1 Statutory Recommendations issued by the External Auditor. And I believe, Julie, you will be introducing the report, and David will be presenting it. Thank you, Julie, and thank you, David, for the introduction. I'm going to take this in two parts. So, firstly, in relation to the statutory recommendations, and given the Section 151's officers' recommendation that we accept those recommendations, do any members of the committee feel differently? Thank you. Thank you. In that case, I think we can say that we accept the recommendations. Let's go through them one by one, and then we can look at the action plans in relation to those. So, the first one is the closing of the accounts. Abdul Razak, is that one for you? Yeah. Would you like to just give us an overview? We've obviously read the papers, and then I'll ask members for questions. Thank you, thank you, Chair. So, just to put some context behind the recommendations, and EY, this is the first time they're auditing us. And in any external audit, you know, the first day is quite challenging normally because they have to go through a lot of procedures. We've worked really hard as a team to get to a place where, you know, our external auditors, we had a really good understanding in terms of, you know, what we've achieved to date. And they are lessons learned as well. So, we spoke about the materiality issue and the number of samples. We spoke about resource requirements. So, we are addressing all of those. And Appendix A basically sets out all the key areas that we're going to work. They are smart objectives, so we are monitoring them. And we've already started that exercise. You know, one key issue is, like, the aims, transactions. We've spoken to the provider. We've recruited a resource dedicated to get those transactions. So, that's all underway. And we've also started engaging with EY in terms of the next steps already. We've already started our interim audit in March, where they've done some walkthroughs, and those were quite successful. So, I'll welcome any questions, but I'll invite Asan to add some comments. Thanks. So, I'll just go through some of the highlights from the Appendix in regards to the audit recommendation. So, in regards to this audit recommendation, there were three specific audit recommendations. Continue to reassess roles, responsibilities, and resource requirements for financial reporting. So, as part of the 23-24 audit, when we became aware of the significant sampling involved, we recruited additional resource within the closure accounts team. So, we've already got that in place. We will undertake a review of the resourcing across the wider finance directorate. So, we can create that resilience to avoid any bottlenecks in the closure accounts team. So, that's a key piece of work that we need to do. We'll get more finance staff involved in the year-end process. And training will naturally be involved as part of that process. So, we need to ensure, as we bring more people into the process, to address this sampling issue, which was the big issue here. The individuals are trained up correctly and understand exactly what's required of them, know how to use the system, know the quality of the working papers that are required and deemed adequate by way of EY. The other key point around continuing to reassess roles that we've got in the action plan is around the client assistant schedule. So, this is quite key for us in terms of planning. It's something that EY provide to us. It's a list of working papers that they will need when the audit commences. So, we'll discuss that with EY in terms of getting that on a timely basis. And our intention is to allocate responsibilities against every single working paper. We'll monitor that on a weekly basis, on a bi-weekly basis, to ensure that we are completing those working papers. So, when EY arrive on day one of the audit, we'll have that entire suite of working papers ready for them. So, that's the key response in regards to continue to reassess roles, responsibilities, and resource requirements. Moving on to the second key audit recommendation, take action to ensure that sufficient and appropriate audit evidence is available. Again, I'm going to highlight some of the key points around, there's issues around what we've raised in terms of quality of working papers. So, this is all about training. So, we've got a specific session booked in with all finance staff, and it's mandatory. Next Tuesday, EY will be coming in to provide that training session. They will be providing their feedback in terms of some of the challenges they faced when it came to our working papers. And we've invited all finance staff along to take that on board, and we'll be ensuring that the lessons are picked up, and we can address those issues moving forwards. We'll also have in-house internal training across the finance directorates around standardised working papers templates to ensure that we meet the quality of working papers required from EY. A couple of other key points that I'll mention. I won't go through the entire list. The aims, income reconciliation, because I know we've discussed this at the audit committee. As Abdurah Zaks mentioned, we've already made good progress on this. So, a dedicated resource has been working on this with our external consultants on aims. We are drawing out those reports, and we think we're in a good place, and we've booked in something with EY for them to assess the work that we've done today. But we think we've made good progress on that. Likewise, I know we've touched on valuations previously. Again, we've got a meeting on Monday between EY's real estate team and our existing valuers to try and address some of those issues, those fundamental assumptions that cause that disagreement between the two sets of valuers and their judgements. So, we're already putting plans and processes in place to address that. And if that fails, we'll look in terms of what kind of valuers we can use moving forwards. That's always in our back pocket. So, that's a couple of key points around having quality of information from the systems. The final audit recommendation in regards to this point was around respond to audit recommendations and findings and corrective actions plans in a timely manner. So, we're already working on previous recommendations made by Deloitte's chair and committee. If you recall, there was a summary report that was presented by Deloitte's at the 4th of December audit committee around their key recommendations. We're addressing that as well as the control observations that EY raised and reported back to the audit committee at the last audit committee. And we intend to report, as a tracker, both of those sets of recommendations at the next order in the audit committee, which will be in April and on a regular basis moving forwards in terms of progress against those recommendations. So, a summary of Appendix A for chair and committee there. Thank you. Happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Abdulazak and thank you, Hassan. I found this action plan really helpful. I think we've talked about a number of those issues over the past few audit committees. And I think for me, this action plan gives us an added level of assurance to be able to track some of those discussions and make sure those actions are implemented. Members, before I ask for any questions, Charlotte, as our independent person with financial training and audit experience, what's your assessment of this action plan, please? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just a couple of things. So, we've got EY coming in, showing us what good looks like. So, that's our first thing, because they are our auditors and hopefully we get guidance from them. We've got a vast experience of people leading on accounts, myself included. So, again, sharing that best practice. Last week, we had a team with all our heads of finance. We spoke about not only standardizing processes, but also having templates that are standard across the piece. That's the first assurance. Second assurance was to create a peer review panel. So, once working papers are done, you've got a central team made up of different people to review those working papers from an auditor's perspective. Can I see this? Does it work? Can I follow the trail? Is the evidence clear? Will that make it easier for an external auditor to have a look and get a show on how those templates work? But I'll let us add on. Yeah, so I completely agree with that. The only thing I would add is it will be the initiative process. So, this will happen every year. So, we're quite keen and our EY colleagues and our external auditors will provide feedback on the quality of our working papers. We will have a program or training that EY will provide to us. As I mentioned earlier, we've already got a book session in on Tuesday. And one of the key things that I was quite keen for them to feed back to us as a finance director is the challenges that they faced with working papers. So, we can learn from that. We'll take that on board, build that into our working papers and standardise as much as we can, as Abdur-Razak mentioned. And I expect this to be the process every year. So, we improve. We're on this continuous improvement journey. I imagine that's potentially very difficult to control. So, that's always a key part of every audit. So, they do use a portal in terms of requests that come in for working papers. And then we need to upload that. A wider council question, and particularly with other corporate directors there as well. Are we – because one of the areas that creates gaps in our reporting are the three areas. Thank you, Councillor. So, I can respond to the first two. And I'll let Asen come in on the last one because I haven't been here that long. So, the first one, have we got sufficient resources? That's a good question. So, I think the key was, and we had a meeting today with EY, is to understand their priorities and make sure resources are allocated efficiently. So, once we have that meeting, then it's time for us to go and find the right people to recruit. We've made money available to enable us to do so. But until we understand the audit plan and what EY are actually looking to target, then we will start recruiting the right people. Spend against cost codes. If you remember, Councillor, we did all the start chambers. There was a lot of realignment against, you know, account codes and cost codes. So, that action is being done now as part of budget setting. So, every direct rate, we went through the start chamber session. We did zero-based budgeting based on different areas. Tracking that, again, we've got Power BI dashboards. You will get your access and councillors will get their access in terms of tracking those different cost centres and making sure the right budget is there. However, there will be elements of miscellaneous spend where, you know, some invoices might not be allocated to the correct cost centres. But since we implemented Power BI, corporate directors are able to see that, budget holders are able to see that, and action journals to move them around. So, that exercise, again, you know, we've got high visibility from these dashboards. Unlike previous stage, people don't review them. But, again, we are on top of that. So, in terms of organisational memory, I'll let Asan come into that. But, based on the visibilities we have to a transaction level detail, I would not understand why we can't track the money. So, on the organisational memory, one thing I will say is, in terms of, and one thing that I noticed was there was a lot more churn in staff from a few years ago, especially the Deloitte years that caused this issue. You had people working on things with that knowledge and experience around specific issues. And once they leave, there's always an upskill exercise that needs to be undertaken, and that takes a little bit of time, and that historically has had an impact in the preparation of accounts. I think we're a lot more stable now. We've got a lot more permanent staff, certainly. You've got a more stable closure of accounts team. You've got strategic heads of finance that we've recently recruited to that are permanent members of staff. We went through a very rigorous year over the last 12 months, and possibly a year and a half, where the same team produced three sets of accounts, and then plus had to produce three, 24 accounts. And that team is still here, and I like to think that we will continue with that team. There will be some changes that take place, but I don't expect that to be to the churn and level of previous years. So given what the team's gone through and the resilience within the team, I'd like to think we're in a better position now in terms of the corporate memory. So can I just add as well, I think in terms of process notes and procedures and policies, so we are consolidating them, we are updating them, so we don't have that single person or key parts and dependency and resilience. Thank you. Any other questions from members? Councillor Francis. Thank you, Chair, and thanks to the team for the report. And so I really, I like this as an action plan. I like the way that it's being taken forward, so I don't have any queries about it. I do, though, because I think we're beginning to move into a kind of final stages of looking at some of this stuff and reflecting on the past. I think it is important to say a couple of things. So one of the things that I think is that it isn't just officer. And I believe, I continue to believe, that that was, that we've partly, part of the reason we've ended up in this, we ended up in this situation was because we're kind of a member, organisational memory of as well. So that the next time we go through a period of austerity, we go through a period when we're told we have, continue to have this kind of staff headcount, that we probe that much more intensely than perhaps we were, than we'd around this. And that isn't enough. So I think I'm really happy with this as far as it goes, but I think that we as members have to carry forward some knowledge for the day as well. Thank you. So can I take it from members that we are happy to accept the council's response to recommendation one? Thank you. I'm seeing nods all around. Thank you, Julie, Abdur-Razaka and Hassan for your work on this. And can I take this opportunity? I will write to them on behalf of the committee. Thank you. I'll move on to recommendation two. David, did you want to come in here to introduce this? And then we can talk about how we address this. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. About six weeks ago. So this is the snapshot today. I'm very grateful for officers and directors for assisting us in this work. What you will see here that there is still a few items that are working in progress where we are still reviewing and asking for further evidence in Relay yet. But it is a snapshot of where we are currently nevertheless. And I think, by and large, we've made good progress in completing this. It took place during 2023-24 and 2024-25 year-to-date. So quite a backlog for us to work through. But in completing this exercise, what will happen going forward is we will keep this ticking over because as we receive these confirmations, we will only be adding to this the new audits that limit assurance and therefore become such a burden in terms of resource going forward. In terms of numbers themselves, you can see those in the right-hand side columns. But just to give you a little bit of context, in relation to the top set of statistics, which is the 23-24 recommendations, you'll see there that we were following up 78 recommendations in total. Of those, we've managed to confirm that 7% of them have been fully implemented. 68% are partially or not implemented. And the remaining percentage, we are still addressing. We are still following up officers to ask for more evidence as far as that's concerned. Now, those statistics might be of some concern. In terms of explaining them, I could offer one or two possible explanations, having spoken to officers. And this is in relation to 23-24. So there are obviously some cases where there has been significant churn in heads of services, in officers, in these teams. And I think as audits have been completed, officers coming in and leaving, they haven't inherited some of these audit actions or had sight of them. So I think some things have been left, they just haven't happened. So that's all its actions or things that need to be done that haven't yet been completed. When you look on the lower columns, stats in relation to 24-25, much better here. So we were following up, I think, 108 recommendations. And of those, 29% were fully implemented. 14% were not yet due, so the deadline hasn't yet passed. So we didn't look at those. 31% are partially or not implemented. The remaining 26%, we're still following up and looking for the evidence and going through that iterative process with officers. So the idea behind this is this will become a fixture in terms of a dashboard that will go to the quarterly in terms of the monitoring of the stats and this dashboard. What I will try and do going forward is augment this with a little bit more in terms of percentages and just more useful information, because I appreciate you all, and it's not easy to see the wood for the trees in some of these statistics. Nevertheless, what should happen over time is these percentages in terms of implementation should increase. So as we've spoken to officers and we've realised and they've realised that things that should have been implemented haven't been implemented, or they're only part way there, that will act as a catalyst for action and for officers to appropriately, organisationally for those things to be implemented. So I think it's been a valuable exercise as far as that's concerned. And I think the final thing to say is I think this is a lot more useful than the methodology that was hitherto applied, which was the team and also for this committee. I'll pause there, Chair. Thank you, David. Really helpful, as always. I guess where I'm confused on this is that this is a statutory recommendation and the recommendation is that the council requires to put in place an action plan. So to me, that's an action plan that needs to be owned by management. So I think the document and the matrix that you've taken through is a really good assessment and an up-to-date assessment of where we are with those internal audit recommendations. But I do not feel that it is internal audits' responsibility to address the recommendation. To me, that's something that management is responsible for. With that, we've obviously got a number of corporate directors here tonight. And maybe we should take the opportunity to hear from them as to their response to the recommendations. And I'll start in the room first. I think what would be really helpful is this is audit committee. It's here to get assurance over risk, controls, governance. So the question that I would put to the corporate directors and to Karen as representative is what assurance can you give us that you are taking these recommendations seriously and what action will you be taking to make sure that these get implemented as well? So if I could start with Steve, please. Thank you, Chair. So I've been working here at Tower Hamlets now just over a year and the directorate management team. And we have a dialogue about what audits are planned, about areas of risk and what future audits should be carried out. And we also do have reporting and updates in terms of whether audit recommendations have been closed. Given the breadth of audit work that's happening in children's services and that includes assurance audits back in 2023, and you can probably tell from some of the description in terms of the audit title primarily that it's all around cash handling, around social care services and access to cash usually in an emergency for particular purposes. I think where we are now in terms of those particular audits and those recommendations is we have carried out a lot of work between business support function, children's services, and we should be able to close down those audit recommendations when we move to completely cashless. So there has been some use of cash, but we're working, as I said, between business support, finance, and our teams in children's services itself, and that should close these down. Thank you. What I might do is go to all of the directors first and then take questions, if that's OK. Thank you. So I'll leave you to the end, if that's all right, Julie. So could I go to Simon Baxter online? Have you got your hand up to respond to this, or do you have a separate question? No. Yes, to the first part. So as soon as you said, you know, corporate directors, do you want to comment on your hand up first? But Steve, we had ready to beat me to it. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, members. I just want to reiterate what Steve said. I've got a really good relationship with the audit team, and David, you know, they're extant that we have an open dialogue, very honest. David attends my GMT on a regular basis. And though we have quite a few limited assurance audits, we've got an action plan for those. So certainly for the two idea stores, I didn't get idea stores until last October, and I've been here a year, like Steve. And so we've got an action plan for those. King George's Trust and Business Continuity Planning and Passenger Transport. The passenger transport recommendations will be implemented by May 2025, so it's only a couple of weeks out, really. And the same April for Business Continuity, and the others are a work in progress. We do take this seriously, and you should indeed have my assurance that as a new director, communities have this as part of the government's model now. And I feel assured by my team and the work that we're already doing with Audit, and my own support staff to get through this, because it's important that we get on top of these things. I don't want to, as much as I admire the work that Audit Committee does, I don't want to be in front of you too often. So hopefully that we can get on top of this, and that you are satisfied that we've got an action plan for that. I'm happy to share that with members, if so required, at a later date. Thank you. Thank you, Simon, and you're always welcome to attend Audit Committee. It's an open invitation. Karen, would you like to come in next? Yeah, I was just coming off mute. So, I mean, I'd just like to say that I do recognise what David was talking about in terms of baton changes between people who are leaving the organisation and new people starting. Because if I look at the five limited assurance over one in 2003, one in 2004 and 2005, of all of those areas, there isn't a director that was responsible for those when they were carried out. So there has been a significant movement of staff in the housing and regeneration directory. And so, as David was alluding to, some of that, some of the slowness of the progress may have been because there wasn't that necessarily those baton changes that were happening. But just in terms of the progress, I'm looking at a spreadsheet. We have a spreadsheet here which tells us what the progress is on all of these five limited assurance where there are outstanding actions. And I can report that there's been significant progress in some of the major ones, which were particularly around homelessness, which I remember coming to the committee here around homelessness, where it was all around timely decision makings, around applications. With being 34 new staff that have been recruited in that area, which means casework is reduced, that we've got smarter KPIs, which are in the 23-29 homelessness strategy. And more importantly, and I think we talked about this a lot at the audit committee, is the investment in the IT. When audit carried out the inspection of those homelessness assessment cases, if it takes 20 pieces of paper to make a homelessness assessment, they were spread across different IT systems, making it very difficult for caseworkers to keep track of the different pieces of information that led to an assessment being made. The consolidation of that system through investment of about 1.8 million of IT money is really going to help make significant progress in getting on top of that timely decision making of casework, of cases in relation to that area. One of the other areas that I would like to mention was repairs. So, the audit recommendations there was about holding Mears to account, particularly around their underperformance and penalties, and the new assistant, new director of assets has already met with Mears around that, and we're also bringing in some validation software in order to sort of make sure that all penalties are recovered. You may have heard about the Regulator of Social Housing Inspection that occurred last month. That has brought into sharp relief a lot of the sort of improvements that we need to make in terms of the repairs service, and there already is an end-to-end repairs review underway, which was one of the audit recommendations that's already underway, and that will align with quite a huge amount of our actions coming out of the inspection of the housing management services. And the final one I'd like to give you some assurance on is on the TA arreas. So, immediately when we had the audit on the TA arreas, we moved the TA arreas service, rent arreas service, into revenues and benefits, because that's where a lot of the organisational expertise sits. So, there's been a huge amount of effort put into ensuring that there are some better escalation procedures for when people dip into arrears, making sure that we've got early repayment programmes with them so the escalators don't escalate. And there's some really good green shoots around the amount of income recovery that we're getting from people who are dipping into rent arrears. So, I just wanted to give you a flavour of some of the things that came out of the audits in which the services got held up and has moved forward with, and just to reassure you that all of these are on a tracker. We're regularly reviewing them at DLT, and hoping to close down those outstanding actions within the next couple of months. Thank you, Karen. And then, Julie, if I could ask you to talk to this item. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. Can I get an indication of people who want to ask questions, please? And could I ask that we keep our questions to the topic of the statutory recommendation and try to avoid in getting to specifics at this point, about specific audits? Otherwise, we may be here longer than some of us perhaps want to be. Not me, of course. Charlotte, you indicated first, so I'll go to you, and then I'll go to Councillor Chowdhury and Councillor Ahmed. Thank you, Chair. I have three... Has the report been issued, or...? Yeah, so there is an error on the spreadsheet, so the report has been issued. There were five recommendations, three high. Yeah, the report's been issued. We've had some evidence from the service, which we are in the process of looking at and querying, so that's why it's a work in progress. Okay, so is it just... The first question I will ask when I land there is, are there any outstanding audit recommendations? Because I didn't, so I genuinely didn't ask that question, but I should, I was going to take. Yeah, we're quite pragmatic about the issue you mentioned in relation to the recommendations no longer being relevant, but we would take a read from officers. Now, we haven't had, during this exercise, a lot of officers come forward saying that was agreed. So, it's not been too much of an issue during this exercise. We're going back to, I think the earliest one is probably, it looks like it's May. Organisational change does call into question the relevance occasionally of these things, and where it does, we obviously will be pragmatic in how we would apply that audit test. We list a number of issues in various departments of the Council, and it's very welcome to see this level of detail coming to this committee. How long do officers think and believe it will take us to solve these issues arising from last year's accounts? And what are we going to do next year, para 3.6? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. So, I think that's a really helpful observation, because this recommendation is not just about internal audit recommendations, it's about external. We spend a lot of time discussing internal audit recs, but not necessarily the external audit ones. So, we need to find a mechanism of making sure those external audit recommendations are addressed as well. So, thank you. Who would like to respond to Councillor's question around 3.6, please? Thank you, David. Thank you, Chair. I think that the member was possibly absent from the preview, which was why I didn't offer one at this point in time. 3.6 just really explains the methodology behind the, that have been given a limited assurance grading, and we were doing, if you like, an almost a full follow-up audit within 6 to 12 months. So, the audit process would entirely replicate itself to cement an improvements over a 6 or 12-month period. So, that was quite a labour-intensive exercise. What we've pivoted to now is just honing in on the recommendations that an individual audit was making, rather than repeat, regurgitate a lot of possibly unnecessary and extraneous sample testing of transactions. So, this is probably quicker and easier in terms of methodology, in terms of the level of evidence we look at. The other thing to say is, of course, we are only looking at limited assurance audit reports, so it would be limited or low. So, those are the ones that would fall, if you like, below the line. So, we would have substantial, reasonable, limited, and then low assurance audits. So, the limited are the ones in terms of risk that we've chosen to follow up on. And, of course, the paragraph also refers to the fact that we will provide this dashboard to this committee, who are here this evening, and Julie's leadership team as well. So, it's got a chance of actually officers looking at it and reviewing it before it gets to CMT. The document is assembled. Thank you. Julie, did you want to... Would you be the best person to respond to the point around external audit recommendations? So, this one. So... Okay, thank you, Julie. I think we'll come back to this shortly. So, Councillor Ahmed, if you'd like to ask your question. I'll try to be as brief as possible again. As well. Now, are they the individuals, are they the responsible people in charge? And, if so, I think I would expect at least a director-level individuals rechecking the main person of contact and what that represents. Thank you. As opposed to the charge. Thank you, Councillor. Can I just say, in the interest of time, that last point around whether anything is incorrect, David, could I ask you to look at that and revise that for the next meeting? In relation to names, I'm not sure what the council policy is on that. And maybe, David, you could talk to that if you're aware. I think in relation to your first point around what does regularly reported to, I think we're in a position to make that recommendation. So, if there's something that you think would be appropriate, then please say. And, similarly, in relation to the information we see as committee, I think of it, what would your preference be? I'd be interested to hear as well. Yeah, thank you. So, I suppose I'm a person who believes in incremental change to achieve your total goal of meetings in terms of how we're moving forward with that. Noted. David, can I turn to you, please? Thank you. Yeah, the information will be provided quarterly. We've got that frequency to be up, then that's absolutely fine. In relation to the names, it might be easy to redact, and this is for our benefit rather than for anybody else's. The contact details may seem occasionally anomalous, but they are correct. So, for example, in King George's Field Trust, a lot of the actions in relation to that one do actually fall to an individual within Democratic, based on what the Councillor has mentioned. In terms of the report itself, what we would do is it will be incremental. So, if and when new limited assurance audits are published, so we will reflect that in this document appropriately. Councillor Riley, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, officers, as well. It's been really interesting. Briefing on the first point, so I think a good way of actually looking at those risk areas would be to align any particular audits that the committee wanted to look at. Thank you. Any other questions on recommendation two? No? Okay. I think that was a really helpful discussion. I think there's a few things to add to the response here. So, I think, for me, we've had a discussion around the information that needs to be shared at audit committee, that we would like to see it on a quarterly basis, that we would like to see that comparison and that incremental improvement committee as well. I think the point that Julie made around needing to see the detail behind each directorate and that tracker, I think, would be really helpful. And to get some assurance that that is being looked at and being monitored regularly as well is an important part of addressing this recommendation. I think the point around handover has been made as well, so I think we need to see a specific action around handover and how, when staffs leave, how they're planning, as well as part of that. And I think, for me, this is a good opportunity for us to state as an audit committee that where recommendations, particularly on limited audit reports, haven't been implemented, that we would expect corporate directors to come to committee and provide an explanation as to why those actions haven't been implemented. Seem nods. Seem nods. Everyone in agreement with that? Yeah. Thank you. And I know that separately we've talked about external audit recommendations being tracked and being reported to committee as well, and I think that would be helpful to acknowledge as well that we've looked at that separately. So, with that in mind, and with those additional points raised, I think our audit committee happy to accept the council's response with the additions that we as a committee are making. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll then move on to recommendation three, which is procurement. I would like to – sorry, before we do that, I'd like to just thank the corporate directors for attending. I did note that there's no one here from adults, is that correct? Yep. The corporate director from adults has been taking the council, so that's why they weren't here. Thank you. Thank you for that explanation. Much appreciated. Okay. Let's move on to recommendation three. Andy, is that for you to present to us? Oh, Julie. Thank you. Hi. So, I started by – Thank you, Julie. Should we take questions then? Councillor Francis. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for that introduction, and that gives it helpful context, because, I mean, these things are always with some of this. So, I have a couple of specific questions, but before I ask that, can I just understand, who has identified the recommendation area of non-compliance? As they come from PwC, or is that something that the council, that our own corporate team – as I look at appendix three for this report, there is a table, and the table includes a list of things that it says are recommendations. Thank you, Julie. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I think the point we were trying to make is this work actually started way before the auditors actually completed their work. So, we've been reviewing all the issues we've had with procurement since I started, and that's why we've consolidated all the different recommendations across the piece. And you will see some of those actions are actually addressing what the statutory recommendations are asking for. On the second table or paper we've given you, we've picked up exactly, you know, which actions will completely address those issues. But you will see from the first appendix, they're already on track, and we are actually completing those. Okay, so Ansel's own team has decided what goes into these areas of non-compliance. So, when I look under the issue of leadership here as a best value theme, which I see that there are two points in here, powers 4.37 and 4.38 from the best value inspectors' report. And yet, when I read that section of the best value inspection report in relation to consultants, it has quite a lot to say as well about the use of consultants in the mayor's office. And it includes this statement, I'm going to quote from the inspection report. Seven members of the office are employed as agency workers, and we asked for details of the 3.24. We were also provided with their individual day rate. We were surprised at these figures, as they appeared to indicate that advisors were regularly working above the normal number of working days in the year. On the 21st of June, we... Sorry, Councillor Francis, I'm just going to interrupt you. Can I just get some clarity? So, agency workers, do they come under procurement, or do they come under a different area, please? I think there's two... Universal... Schedule of all improvements that have been made and are going to be made to procurement. The action plan you want to see around that, which is why I said what I said at the beginning, Councillor. Thank you for clarifying that. So, I'm just going to jump in, because the first point in that recommendation is saying, undertake a detailed review of procurement and contract management arrangements, and implement an action plan to improve the processes and controls. Has that been done, and is what we're seeing, the output of that review? What you're seeing is not the output of the review that was presented by Assam. You need to schedule of what has been done in relation to that detailed review of procurement. You should accept the statutory recommendation, which you've already done. Thank you. Apologies, Councillor Francis. Did you want to come back on that? Chair, do you want... Are we being given, or should we just... What do we have to do? Just set aside this information and come back next time, next month, on this action plan? Thank you. I think given what we have been told by a Section 151 officer, I feel that we are probably not... It wouldn't be right for us to question the information in detail that we've been presented with in relation to Recommendation 3 at this point. If there are other points, specific issues and concerns relating to risk and control that you feel we, as an audit committee, should have more information on, then that is something I feel that it's within our power to request. So if there's anything that you've read that you want us, as a committee, to get a briefing on or to get more information on, I think that's something that we can request. So I will question around the use of consultants in the mayor's office. And I also think that this, the second of these, for the really, really serious point, that needs to be addressed. And I understand that that might be a work in progress, but I can't see how anything that's been put on the table so far addresses this point about a contract with, I don't know who, an individual or a company having gone up from what was under 25 specifically on those two points. So committee, in relation to the action plan that's been presented to us, the recommendation is not to accept it, but to request a more detailed action plan that addresses the recommendations. Given that, I mean, what position does that leave us in, in terms of the statutory recommendations and the timescales? I think David can comment on the ex-day loaders here, but it should be limited to that statutory recommendation. Thank you, Julie. And I think that as we've noted those as actions, I think we can get the specifics from those reports reported to us as well. Yeah. OK, so in that case... Sorry, Chair, can I just ask that they are reported to us? I'm happy to receive information outside of the... I think that's fair. If we could minute that, please, for Hanna. Thank you. So in relation to recommendation three, we are not accepting the action plan as presented and that we will look to receive that detailed action plan for the 24th of April. Before we wrap up that item, can I just confirm that the progress against the different recommendations and those action plans will be presented to audit committee at our regular quarterly meetings and that we will be provided with an update on those? Thank you. Councillor, yes. Sorry, I just want to reconfirm just a bit of clarity. Do you oppose any risks? Stephen, please come in. Thank you. Through you, Chair. I think what the member is asking is whether or not the course of action that's been recommended in relation to recommendation three is in compliance with the requirements of the Act where statutory recommendations are made and possibly a question better directed towards the monitoring officer. Jill, as legal officer. I just want that robust clarification noted and minuted because I don't want to put the council at risk, particularly with external auditors. I think it's a fair challenge and a fair clarification for sure. Julie, would you like to come in there, please? So, I think that the requirements set out at 3.10 about the decisions that need to be taken during this that we've considered the three recommendations. We've considered whether we accept them. We've considered whether they need any actions and some of the actions that are specifically accepted the recommendations and has set out a... Sorry, it's a bit distracting. Has set out a... We wouldn't be getting statutory recommendations. Do you want to clarify that we haven't actually agreed to anything? Councillor Francis has put a proposal forward. Chair's made a comment on advice So, we've agreed that we accept the council's response to recommendation 1. We've agreed that we've accepted the council's response to recommendation 2 with some additional actions as per our discussion. However, we are not agreeing the council's response to recommendation 3 on the basis that the information... The section 151 officer has committed to presenting a more detailed action plan at our meeting on the 24th of April. Just for technical purposes, I just wanted to agree to it. I wouldn't have agreed to it when you made the statement. So, sorry to be pedantic. But you're happy to agree now? Yes. Great. Thank you. Councillor Francis, did you want to come in still? Thank you. I just wanted to agree that this is... that we should... this is a fine approach and let's just move on. Thank you. Thank you to officers for your support and input on that as well. We are now moving to the exclusion of press and public. In view of the contents of the remaining items on the agenda, the committee is recommended to adopt the following motion that under the provisions of Section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972 as amended by the Local Government Access to Information Act 1985, the press and public be excluded from the remainder of the meeting for the consideration of the Section 2 business on the grounds that it contains information defined as exempt in Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972. Could someone second that, please? Thank you. I'm happy to agree. Thank you all. We've had a request for a five-minute comfort break, so I'm happy to adjourn the meeting for us to restart at 20.31. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.