Members considered the Internal Audit Draft Annual Plan Report for 2023/2024 based on assurance mapping and risk assessments across the Council’s critical services. The Principal Auditor introduced the report and provided Members with brief context as to the reports purpose, highlighting the main aspects of the Annual Plan in the appendix.

The plan had been developed taking a risk-based approach and had been developed in conjunction with Management through managers requests, member requests, cyclical reviews, and areas of interest intelligence gathering such as the combined assurance work.

The report included the level of resources, and costs of providing assurance through delivery of the plan.

Debate ensued, and Members commented about the listed areas of audits and enquired about other possible areas for internal audit to focus on. These included the housing and renting situation within the District, selective licensing scheme under consideration, and the project to rejuvenate RAF Scampton if the circumstances facilitated such an audit.  The Principal Auditor explained further consideration could be held by at the six-month review stage and could be raised during liaison meetings with Management Team to assess the appetite, alongside other priorities and emerging risks in the Plan.

In response to a query about the reduction of the number of days, this had been reduced from 166 to 146 as there were to be no subsidiary days planned for the 2023/24 council year. Seeking to understand if this would create a saving, Members were advised that subsidy work would potentially need to be undertaken through another arrangement; the subsidy work allocation was currently under discussion by Management Team.

Having been proposed and seconded, it was unanimously

RESOLVED that the contents of the report be agreed and that Members were assured the plan provided robust coverage of the Council’s critical areas and services.