Agenda item

The Head of Internal Audit introduced the report which detailed the progress against the internal audit recommendations, work completed to date on the Internal Audit and Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT) Plan 2019-20 and the high and medium priority internal audit recommendations.

The report covered the 6-month period from 1st April to 30th September 2020 -  Phase 1 of this year’s plan. The Head of Internal Audit explained the reason for the 6 months was due to a separate quarterly report not being taken to the July meeting.

At the end of Phase 1, 20 reviews were delivered and this represented 41% of the audit plan. She explained that although this was lower than the usual target for this time of year (53% at end of Q2) it should be viewed in the context of COVID-19.

The Committee were provided with a summary of the one Limited Assurance report – Housing Benefits, set out on page 19 that was issued during the period. This received Limited Assurance with 7 medium and 2 low priority actions being raised. Implementation of the actions will formally be reported back to the next meeting.

With regards to the audit actions followed up over the period, set out in page 25, all high priority actions due were followed up and a sample of medium priority actions. Of the 17 high priority actions 10 (59%) were implemented or superseded. Of the 65 medium priority actions, 57 (88%) were implemented or superseded. In total across all those actions 81% were implemented or superseded.

With regards to the concerns raised around ‘slippage’ the Chief Executive assured the committee that were issues are identified, they are brought to his attention and that of his management team.

With regards to GT4 – Managing access and authorisation rights on IT systems, Councillor Moore sought assurances that as this was now being taken forward as part of the Managing Systems Access Rights audit, those particular sets of recommendations relating to GT4 would continue to be tracked as part of that larger review. The Head of Internal Audit confirmed that they will be referring back to exactly what that recommendation covered when the access control audit is scoped out.

With regards to the Housing Benefit audit, The Head of Finance: Exchequer clarified the following for the committee;

No date stamp on applications received.

Although there were records of when documents were received, they would come in via difference routes e.g. different receipt books and it was accepted that going forward only one process should be in place, as highlighted by the audit. 

Overpayments of 324,589

Overpayments occur when a customer has failed to notify CSG of a change in their circumstances. When CSG do later become aware of this change, an overpayment gets created as a result.  In the instance where it is a CSG error and an overpayment is generated, it is below the government threshold and therefore the Department of Works and Pension (DWP) fully pay the subsidy due on those payments.  

Write off of overpayments

It was accepted that this was area of weakness. Some overpayments had now been processed and some reported to the Policy and Resources Committee. The Head of Finance: Exchequer said this was a working progress and the team would be looking to do work on that every quarter.

With regards to benefit fraud investigation and training the Director of Assurance clarified that up until 2015, investigating benefit fraud had been the responsibility council’s Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT). That responsibility was subsequently transferred to the Department of Works and Pension (DWP) in 2015, meaning that where suspicion of fraud was identified, it would be referred to the DWP.  She explained that there is a Memorandum of understanding with the DWP which sets out the criteria for benefit assessors and one of those criteria is that as the investigative body training, is provided by the DWP.

The CSG Revenue and Benefits Contract Manager confirmed that in-house fraud training was carried earlier in the year but would be happy to work with the CAFT and take further guidance from the team.

With regards to the Investing IT review the Head of Internal Audit clarified this was not about IT projects. But that rather that as part of that review they looked at the council’s project management arrangements for non- IT projects which are governed through a different mechanism. Therefore, this was a final action from that audit to get assurance around the corporate management of non IT projects.

RESOLVED –That the Committee note the work completed to date on Internal Audit Phase 1 progress report - 1^st April to 30th September 2020.