The Audit Committee of Southampton Council met on Monday 6th October 2025 to discuss external audit progress, a consolidated action plan, and strategic risks. The committee was also scheduled to approve the minutes from their previous meeting.

Strategic Risks

The Director of Legal and Governance submitted a report summarising the council's strategic risks at the end of quarter 1 of 2025-26. Strategic risks are defined as:

those risks that are of significant, cross-cutting importance to the council that they are considered to require the attention and oversight of the council's senior management team (the Management Board).

The report included a strategic risk register, which captures and reports on the status of the council's key strategic risks. The Management Board updates and reviews this register quarterly, ensuring actions are in place to manage risks in line with the council's risk appetite.

The report also included a weighted risk matrix.

The appendices to this item, the Summary - Strategic Risks and the Risk Matrix, were scheduled to be exempt from publication because they include information that could be subject to legal professional privilege.

External Assurance Review - Consolidated Action Plan

The Executive Director Enabling Services and S151 Officer¹ submitted a report detailing the consolidated action plan which brings together all the recommendations from external reviews.

The report noted that at the meeting of the Audit Committee on 30 June, the Committee agreed to receive and monitor on a quarterly basis a consolidated action plan in relation to recommendations made in the following external reviews:

• CIPFA Financial Resilience Review (2023)
• CfGS Review of Governance and Decision Making
• Value for Money Commentary (2022/23 and 2023/24)
• External Assurance Review
• Corporate Peer Challenge

The consolidated action plan was included as an appendix to the report.

The action plan consolidates 88 recommendations made across the external reviews undertaken of the council since 2023 into 21 overarching recommendations across six themes:

• Governance
• Financial Management
• Financial Resilience
• Risk and Audit
• Workforce and Leadership
• Housing Improvement Plan

Of the 21 recommendations, 9 are complete or have become established processes which have been moved into business as usual. Key milestones to be achieved over the next 12 months have been set in the action plan for the remaining 12 actions.

The Housing Improvement Board will continue to monitor the detailed actions and progress towards addressing the findings of the Regulator of Social Housing. Cabinet will continue to have oversight of the Corporate Peer Challenge Action Plan which was approved by Cabinet in May 2025. Progress against these actions will be reviewed by the Corporate Peer Challenge Team in November on a follow up visit to the council.

External Audit Progress Update

The committee was scheduled to receive a verbal update from the External Auditors detailing the External Audit Progress.

Minutes of Previous Meeting

The committee was scheduled to approve and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 4 August 2025.

The previous meeting's minutes record that the committee received the report of the Chief Internal Auditor detailing the Annual Internal Audit Opinion for 2024-25, which noted that the standards of which Internal Audit must abide by had changed on 1 April 2025.

The committee noted that within the 2024-25 financial year, Internal Audit & Counter Fraud had completed 25 full audits, 6 audits without assurance opinions, 8 follow ups, 2 analytics work and 8 grant reviews. Internal Audit results had been mixed with full audit results highlighting 10 new 'limited assurance' areas which was equivalent to 40% of full audits. It was further noted that of the 8 follow up reports undertaken, 7 (88%) remained at 'limited assurance'.

The committee also noted that the opinion was also informed and influenced by wider factors, including but not limited to, the financial position of the authority together with the pace required to meet transformation savings, the Housing Regulator judgement of 'serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes' and the findings from the corporate peer review conducted by the Local Government Association. Considering all these factors and the additional details outlined in the appendix of the report, a 'limited assurance' opinion had been provided for 2024-25.

The committee also received the report of the External Auditor detailing the External Audit 2024-25 Interim Progress Report which had seen July gathering and populating information and data quality and providing questions to management. There would be a 6-week period of work over September and October reviewing information, there had been good collaboration and positive direction of travel to date with the expectation that November's progress report would have the answers to the questions that had been posed to management.