Issue - meetings

Report of the Executive Director of Corporate Resources and Customer Services

The Committee considered the report of the Executive Director of Corporate Resources and Customer Services which summarised the current implementation position and arrangement for monitoring and reporting internal audit recommendations.

In accordance with Public Sector Internal Audit Standards, the Chief Internal Auditor must “establish and maintain a system to monitor the disposition of results communicated to management; and a follow-up process to monitor and ensure that management actions have been effectively implemented or that senior management has accepted the risk of not taking action.”

For Sefton Council the follow up of agreed audit action plans included the monitoring of progress of audit agreed actions through internal audit and periodically reporting progress to the Audit and Governance Committee.

A review of the outstanding actions from all audits between 2018/2019 to 2022/2023 financial years indicated that on the whole most of the agreed actions had been addressed but that a small proportion of the agreed actions remained outstanding. Of note was the six High priority agreed actions from 2018/2019 where progress was still outstanding. However, the overall performance showed that significant efforts had been made to implement the agreed actions, with the implementation rate of 83% being above the industry standard benchmark (65%).

RESOLVED:

That the progress outlined in the report be noted.