Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Council’s External Auditor.

The Audit Manager, Grant Thornton presented the progress report making the following points:  

• there was a new requirement to bring the report before the end of November;  

• they had identified three key recommendations, but these were continuations from prior findings; 

• there had been no evidence of any further training on the counter-fraud arrangements;  

• recommendations regarding performance reporting had been responded to by the Council, but were yet to be embedded; and  

• progress was being made regarding the recommendations for procurement, however there was no contract management training in place. 

The Audit Manager, Grant Thornton, the Strategic Director for Corporate Resources, Head of Service – Finance, and the Procurement Manager responded to Members’ questions in the following terms:  

• recommendations and responses from the Strategic Management Board could be found on page 65;  

• counter-fraud used to be run by internal audit, however, following our management restructure this took time to put in place;  

• there had been a series of counter-fraud procedures put in place across key risk areas;  

• the forward arrangements remained robust but there would be a meeting with the internal auditor soon; and  

• there would be an updated counter-fraud strategy coming to the Audit and Governance Committee next march.  

• training staff had been a priority for procurement and 145 members of staff had had procurement training to date;  

• the procurement team had adopted a strategy, but this would be reviewed later on;  

• free Cabinet Office contract management training would be implemented in the future;  

• there was no risk of statutory recommendations due to the great work of the procurement team; and  

• the External Auditor’s Annual Report was backdated work to March 2025 rather than the 25/26 financial year.  

The Audit and Governance Committee noted the External Auditor’s Annual Report.