Issue - meetings

nnual Internal Audit Report 2018-2019

Meeting: 10/06/2019 - Audit and Risk Committee (Item 9)

9 Annual Internal Audit Report 2018-2019 pdf icon PDF 721 KB

[To note the contents of the annual internal audit report]

 

Minutes:

Peter Farrow, Head of Audit presented the report that provided the Committee with an annual internal audit opinion on the adequacy and effectiveness of the Council’s governance, risk management and internal control processes.

 

The report referred to a piece of audit work on ‘Recruitment and Retention of Social Workers’. Councillor Lynne Moran said that she had noted the Council was having difficulty recruiting social workers. It would cost the Council more in the long term if it were unable to recruit social workers. She asked whether the Council was thinking outside the box to attract social workers to the city. The Head of Audit reported that the Council was taking action through a variety of measures to increase social worker recruitment and retention.

 

Councillor Roger Lawrence informed the Committee of the Annual Report from the Principal Social Worker on work to promote and improve the quality of social work practice was recently presented to Cabinet. The report identified that for the first time the Council no longer had agency staff as managers of its social work teams. This was unprecedented and the Principal Social Worker’s report demonstrated that a lot of work had gone on the protection of social care.

 

Councillor Philip Bateman MBE and Councillor Mary Bateman both declared a non-pecuniary interest in the report in so far as it referred to Ashmore Park Nursery School where they are school governors.

 

Resolved:

That the contents of the Annual Internal Audit Report and the overall opinion that “based on the work undertaken during the year, the implementation by management of the recommendations made and the assurance made available to the council by other providers as well as directly by Internal Audit, Internal Audit can provide reasonable assurance that the Council has adequate and effective governance, risk management and internal control processes”.