Minutes:
The Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance submitted a report prefacing the Internal Audit Plan for 2022/23. The Plan had been drafted following consultation with individual Directorate Management Teams, Senior Management Team and this Committee to ensure that it was focused on priority areas and this would be proactively managed during the year with Executive Directors and Service Directors to ensure that audit resources continued to be focused on the priorities of the Council.
Appendix 1 to the report summarised the Plan by Directorate and Appendix 2 provided an outline scope of each of the planned areas of work.
Reference was made to:
· the way in which Internal Audit could explore how to facilitate and assist management undertake ‘audit/review’ type activity as part of an approach to make finite audit resources ‘go further’ and equally help management to improve their understanding of their control, risk and governance responsibilities. Arising out of this, there was a discussion of the potential advantages of such an approach and how this might be undertaken
· there was a discussion of the adoption of an ‘agile’ project management approach which was based on an assessment of where resources best needed to be utilised and depending on changing needs and priorities
RESOLVED:
(i) That the Internal Audit Plan 2022/23 be approved, acknowledging the need for the Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance to exercise his judgement during the year to apply the Plan flexibly according to priority, risk and resources available; and
(ii) That quarterly monitoring reports from the Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance continue to be submitted to demonstrate progress against the Plan including information where the Plan has materially varied from the original.