Agenda and draft minutes

To receive any apologies for absence

There were no apologies received.

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]

There were no Declarations of interest.

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

The Minutes of the previous meeting were delayed but will be circulated at a later date.

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

There was no Public Participation

Report to follow

Sarah Knowles provided the committee with an update on the progress of the Internal Audit

Since the last Audit committee meeting there have been 2 Final reports issued, 4 audits are currently in progress, the latest being the Capital programme which started last week. There are a further 4 audits with planned start dates.

Everything is currently on track with no issues.

James Deane provided an update regarding the Strategic Risk Register.

The Committee are informed that the format of the report has now changed.

Councillor Birnie was surprised to see that Legal services was not on the list of areas under pressure. JD confirmed that it is definitely an area under pressure but after taking all the factors into account the decision was made to keep the service in house.

Councillor Chapman enquires if Salaries are an area that is looked into. JD confirms that they do compare salaries with other Local authorities in the areas they are struggling to recruit into, however DBC will never be able to compete with the private sector when it comes to salaries, things like flexibility, work life balance and working environment are all things that can be offered do make a package more attractive to potential candidates so these are the areas DBC can focus on.

Fiona Jump provided a report to the committee to update them on three key areas of change:

1: Supplementary Budgets

2: Financial System Authorisation levels

3: authorisation of non-land proposals

Councillor Birnie was surprised that the report had already been to the Finance and Rescores Committee, and when referring to the Minutes of that meeting he found no record of the discussion in the minutes. NH confirmed it had been presented to the committee and can only assume that as there were no questions raised for this item they had not been recorded in the minutes.

The new work programme for 2020 will be presented at the next Audit Committee

Making Tax Digital

From the 1^st October 2019 all tax returns need to be submitted digitally, as this is a significant change it was felt that extra assurances were required to ensure DBC were ready.

After a review of the practices and procedures it was felt that DBC were in a good position to proceed and everything was ready for the launch on October 1^st.

Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support.

Good assurance were received for both system design and effective of quality controls.