Agenda and draft minutes

To receive any apologies for absence

Apologies for absence were submitted on behalf of Councillor Adshead.

To receive any declarations of interest

A member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or a personal interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered -

(i)            must disclose the interest at the start of the meeting or when the interest becomes apparent

and, if the interest is a disclosable pecuniary interest, or a personal interest which is also prejudicial

(ii)        may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter (and must withdraw to the public seating area) unless they have been granted a dispensation.

A member who discloses at a meeting a disclosable pecuniary interest which is not registered in the Members’ Register of Interests, or is not the subject of a pending notification, must notify the Monitoring Officer of the interest within 28 days of the disclosure.

Disclosable pecuniary interests, personal and prejudicial interests are defined in Part 2 of the Code of Conduct For Members

[If a member is in any doubt as to whether they have an interest which should be declared they should seek the advice of the Monitoring Officer before the start of the meeting]

Councillor Douris declared an interest in the items in the Internal Audit Report referring to provisions and supplies - receipts and services due to his role with one of those providing services to the Council.

Councillor Douris also declared an interest in the Internal Audit report dealing with the West Herts Crematorium business case as he is a member of the Board of governing that body.

To confirm the minutes of the previous meeting and consider the actions.

The amended Audit Plan follows the minutes.

The minutes of the meeting on 10 February were confirmed by the members present. It was pointed out that the meeting dealt with a Part 2 item and consequently, although the item was dealt with in part 1, a part 2 minute should be produced.

Councillor W Wyatt-Lowe requested that any actions or follow ups requested by the committee appear in a separate table containing a column that identifies the meetings at which the action was requested.

An opportunity for members of the public to make statements and ask questions in accordance with the rules as to Public Participation

None

Hannah Ormiston (HO) introduced this item and took the members through the various elements of the audit. She paid particular attention to the 40+ testing that was carried out on Rent Rebates and Rent Allowances due to errors that had been identified in last year’s audit.

Cllr Barnes asked for clarification on how the audit was carried out.

C Baker, Group Manager (Revenues, Benefits and Fraud) and HO went through the process for testing - and what happened when an error was found - the results of testing 40 in each area (cell) that has shown an error was then extrapolated across the population – the resulting 0.02 error rate was considered to be manageable.

HO then went on to outline the progress of the audit and reported that it is on target for early publication.

The committee considered the Strategic Risk Register and noted the contents.

M Gaynor – Corporate Director (Housing & Regeneration) will be attending the next meeting to deal with I3 Investment in infrastructure.

J Deane Corporate Director (Finance & Operations) suggested that in future it would be more appropriate to bring the Q4 report to committee and to miss out Q3as it has been substantially updated by the time the meeting takes place.

Cllr Tindall drew attention to the amber rating in Risk C6 and the healthy rate of employee turnover compared with that of the public sector.

Cllr Tindall then went on to request that a report on the implications of the recent Housing and Planning Bill be brought to a future meeting of the committee as soon as it is available.

Cllr Taylor returned to Risk C7 and the matter of Data protection/security. He is particularly anxious to ensure that all staff are properly trained in this area and wants members to show a lead by attending the training arranged for them on this subject. J Worts (JW) Information Security Team Leader confirmed that there have been 4 member development sessions on this subject since 2013 and that a third of members attended his last training session. Cllr Taylor congratulated the members and requested they keep up the good work.

Internal Audit Reports

·         Core Financial systems

·         Budgetary Control

·         NNDR

·         Housing Benefit – Council Tax Support

·         Data Security

·         Health & Safety

·         Member Training & Expenses

S Knowles (SK) (Mazzars) began with a general overview of the progress against the audit plan and concluded that Internal Audit for 2015/16 was almost complete. She drew attention to Other Work underway on the Assurance Framework and its contribution to the verification of the work towards effective governance arrangements.

She confirmed that 92% of the IA recommendations for 15/16 have been actioned and that at 31 March only two areas have still to be completed.

Cllr Tindall sought and was give confirmation that the Housing Lettings report had been deferred due to fraud investigations currently underway.

The committee then went on to consider each of the Internal Audit Reports submitted on individual services.

Core Financial Systems

SK began by pointing out that there are three priority 3 recommendations from this audit but this is a good result. Cllr Douris asked if it was a worry that the result was not ‘full /full’ and was told this is not a major concern.

As far as goods receipting was concerned, Cllr Tindall wanted to know why this had not been picked up in previous audits. R Baker was of the opinion that recent software patches may have caused the glitch and now it is picked up they have the matter in hand.

Budgetary Control

No recommendations were raised as a result of this audit and the Evaluation and Testing rating was ‘Full/Full’

NNDR

SK took the committee through the recommendations.

On recommendation 1 High Amount Of Uncleared Historic Suspense Account Items Cllr Barnes asked if these were debit or credit? C Baker (CB) Group Manager (Revenues, Benefits and Fraud) replied that it is a credit.

Cllr Douris went on to Recommendation 2 – Failure to Update Debt Recovery Notes deadline completed and asked if the matter had been brought to the attention of the staff? He suggested this might be something we could work on with Northgate. CB was of the opinion that this is about making notes by humans and he is satisfied that the team leader is now monitoring the practice.

Housing Benefit and Council Tax.

SK started by going through the recommendations.

Cllr Tindall questioned the approach of only taking a sample of 15 claims to try and asses the size of the problem. In his opinion this looks like 25% extrapolated up this is a big figure: so he wanted to know the size of the problem. CB assured the councillor that this is again a human recording issue. However, fortunately all the claims were valid and processed properly and the Auditors are happy the problem is being addressed.

Cllr W Wyatt-Lowe complemented the manager for the cooperation with the auditors and responding swiftly and effectively

Data security

Cllr Taylor began by pointing out that it is apparent that the Data Security info is dependent on those who feed into the report – the matter is widely dispersed widely across the council and a full and substantial is still a good assessment.

Cllr Douris sought  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

The members considered the Audit Committee work programme for 2015/16

Action;

Strategic Risk Register is to be added to agenda for the June meeting.