Issue - meetings

Members considered the Internal Audit Quarter 4 Report 21/22 by Assurance Lincolnshire against the 2021/22 annual programme agreed by the Governance and Audit Committee in March 2021.

In the presenting report, the Officer highlighted to the Committee that during the period since the last report, Internal Audit had completed six assurance audits and had six audits in progress, with three of these at the draft report stage.

Internal Audit had completed 92% of the revised 21/22 plan, which was found in Appendix 2 of the report pack. The six audits which had been completed were:

• Strategic Risk, which included an Inability to maintain critical services and deal with emergency events – High Assurance
• Vulnerable Communities Follow-up – Substantial Assurance
• ICT Network infrastructure and Security – Substantial Assurance
• Insurance – Substantial Assurance
• Carbon Management – Substantial Assurance
• Corporate Plan & Golden Thread Follow-up – Substantial Assurance 

The six which were in progress included:

• ICT Cloud/hosted services – Draft report
• ICT Disaster Recovery and Backup – Draft report
• ICT Helpdesk Follow-up – Draft report
• Flooding – Fieldwork stage
• Value for Money – Fieldwork stage
• Key Control and ERP – Fieldwork stage

Other Work

• Completion of the Annual Combined Assurance Report
• Completion and sign off the certification of Flood Grants.

Debate ensued on the contents of the report, with Members questioning multiple aspects and providing statements from the report.

Note:               Councillor A. Lawrence left the Chamber at 2.30 pm

There was a discussion on the flooding review, which a Member stated was a historical problem, and hoped that the Internal Auditors would look at the history of flooding. The Assistant Director for People and Democratic Services gave assurance that the Authority was working with the local flooding board and ongoing work. 

There was also discussion on the quarterly IT CISCO review, which the Principal Auditor assured Members was revisited every year and could be embedded into future audits.

In response to a query from a Member about Full Council receiving an annual audit report, Members heard that the recommendation from CIPFA was a longer-term process and that consultation was ongoing. Another member also mentioned that the code was more likely to benefit an executive model local authority.

Having been moved and, seconded, on being put to the vote it was unanimously

RESOLVED that having considered the content of the report, no further actions be identified.