The Cabinet is asked to note any apologies for absence received from Members.

An apology for absence was submitted on behalf of the Vice-Chairman (Councillor Steady), with no substitution.

To confirm and sign as a correct record, the minutes of the last meeting of the Committee, held on Thursday 25 July 2024.

It was moved by Councillor Morrison, seconded by Councillor Fairley and:-

RESOLVED that the Minutes of the meeting of the Committee, held on 25 July 2024, be approved as a correct record and be signed by the Chairman.

Councillors are invited to declare any Disclosable Pecuniary Interests, Other Registerable Interests of Non-Registerable Interests, and the nature of it, in relation to any item on the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest by Councillors in relation to any item on the agenda for this meeting.

Subject to providing two working days’ notice, a Member of the Committee may ask the Chairman of the Committee a question on any matter in relation to which the Council has powers or duties which affect the Tendring District and which falls within the terms of reference of the Committee.

On this occasion no Councillor had submitted notice of a question pursuant to Council Procedure Rule 38.

To provide the Committee with a periodic report on the Internal Audit function for the period June 2024 – August 2024, as required by the professional standards.

The Committee was provided with a periodic report on the Internal Audit function for the period June 2024 to August 2024. The Internal Audit Manager’s report also provided an update on the Internal Audit Charter for approval by the Audit Committee, as required by the professional standards.

That report was summarised as follows:-

·      Four audits had been completed since the last Audit Committee in July 2024. All four of the audits had received a satisfactory level of overall assurance of Adequate Assurance.

·      A further 13 audits from the 2023/24 Internal Audit Plan had been allocated and six were currently at the fieldwork phase.

·      The Internal Audit Charter needed to be reviewed and approved for the 2024/25 financial year. There had been no changes since the last update.

·      The Internal Audit Manager continued to oversee the Fraud, Compliance, Risk and Health and Safety services whilst the Assurance and Resilience Manager was on secondment.

·      Internal Audit were currently working with the Council’s IT department to modernise the way its Fraud and Compliance Team worked, by introducing technology that could map out the most efficient routes when out on inspections as well as using data analytics to target the cases the Council inspected, in order to be able to work smarter within limited resources.

·      Interviews for a new apprentice had been held and an appointment made.

INTERNAL AUDIT PROGRESS 2024/25

It was reported that, in relation to the Internal Audit Progress of 2024/25, four audits had been completed since the previous update to the Audit Committee in July 2024, all of which had received a satisfactory overall opinion of ‘Adequate Assurance’. No significant issues had been identified in this period. A further 13 audits from the 2023/24 Internal Audit Plan had been allocated and six audits were currently at the fieldwork phase.

Members were aware that the Internal Audit Manager and Executive Projects Manager (Governance) were currently undertaking a review of the Spendells Housing Project, as requested by Cabinet and the Chief Executive.

It was also reported that the Council’s Audit Team were currently in the ‘Key Systems’ phase of the audit plan where all financial and core service systems and processes were reviewed. Each area was tried and tested as they were very important to the Council’s day to day activities. It was not anticipated that any significant issues in this area would arise as historically they had been well managed. However, it was very important to ensure that those systems and processes continued to work as expected and remained well controlled.

Quality Assurance – The Internal Audit function issued satisfaction surveys for each audit completed. No unsatisfactory responses had been received in this period. 

Resourcing

The Committee was reminded that Internal Audit currently had an establishment of 4 full time equivalent posts with access to a third party provider of Internal Audit Services for specialist audit days as and when required. The Team currently had a vacant post for an Audit Technician.

Team members had recently interviewed a number of candidates  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.

To  provide  the  Committee  with  the  most  recent  annual  letter  to  the  Council  from  the  Local Government  and  Social  Care  Ombudsman  (LGSCO).    The letter  relates  to  complaints processed by the LGSCO in the financial year 2023/24.  It is intended to establish a practice through which these annual letters are reported to this Committee in the future and, thereby, to extend  awareness  of  such  complaints  and  the  opportunity  for  learning  by  the  Council  from complaints.

The Committee considered a report of the Assistant Director (Governance) (A.2) which provided it with the most recent annual letter to the Council from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO).  That letter related to complaints processed by the LGSCO in the financial year 2023/24.  It was intended to establish a practice through which those annual letters were reported to this Committee in the future and, thereby, to extend awareness of such complaints and the opportunity for learning by the Council from complaints.

Members were informed that the Annual Letter from the LGSCO was normally issued in mid-July, with this year’s letter being issued on 17 July 2024.  The letter set out a summary for the previous financial year of the numbers of complaints received by the LGSCO concerning this Council, which services they related to, the decisions reached in the year on complaints made to it and compliance with recommendations from it on upheld complaints.  The 2024 Letter from the LGSCO (in respect of 2023/24) was set out at Appendix A to the report (A.2). 

It was reported that the Annual Letter was sent by the LGSCO to the Chief Executive, the Leader of the Council and the Chairman of this Council’s Resources and Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  A brief summary of the statistics from the Annual Letter, and the upheld complaints identified in the Annual Letter for the year concerned, had been submitted to the Chief Executive’s Officer Management Team, as part of developing learning across the various upheld complaints. From this year’s Annual Letter, and by comparison with the same letters received in 2021, 2022 and 2023, a comparison had been produced which was set out in the ‘Background’ section of the report.

The Committee was made aware that, where an individual report on a particular complaint to the LGSCO had identified maladministration, the Monitoring Officer was under a duty to report to Cabinet (in respect of executive functions) or Council (in respect of non-executive functions). The Annual LGSCO letters had been referenced in reports on individual upheld complaints to Cabinet and Council.  Currently, there was no established practice to report Annual Letters to a body of Councillors to consider.  Through this report, it was proposed for this Committee to take on this role, as part of its terms of reference related to: ‘assess external regulatory reports and monitoring any quality improvement programmes where required.  Comments are provided to Cabinet as appropriate’. 

The Committee was also advised that there was an intention to review the Council’s corporate complaints procedure, following a similar review of the Council’s procedure for complaints made in respect of the Council’s role as landlord (the Housing Complaints Procedure).  Council Housing complaints generally fell within the scope of the Housing Ombudsman and not the LGSCO.  However, this was not always the case (and this was relevant when looking at the summaries of cases referenced in the ‘Background’ section of this report).  The LGSCO had recently adopted a new Complaint Handling  ...  view the full minutes text for item 46.

To present to the Committee the progress on outstanding actions identified by the Committee along with general updates on other issues that fall within the responsibilities of the Committee.

The Committee had before it a report (A.3) that reported progress on the outstanding actions identified by the Committee along with general updates on other issues that fell within the responsibilities of the Committee.

Table of Outstanding Issues

It was reported that the Table of Outstanding Issues had been reviewed and updated since it had been last considered by the Committee in July 2024.

There were two main elements to this report as follows:-

1)    Updates against general items raised by the Committee – Appendix A; and

2)    Updates against the 2023/24 Annual Governance Statement Action Plan – Appendix B

In terms of item 1) above, there were no significant issues to raise, with actions remaining in progress or further details provided within the report.

The Committee was informed that, in respect of the 2023/24 Annual Governance Statement Action Plan, although this remained subject to the Committee’s final approval later in the year once the work of the External Auditor was completed, for timely and practical reasons the version currently published at the end of May 2024 alongside the Unaudited Statement of Accounts presented the most up to date position for the Committee’s consideration.  This approach enabled the actions and associated updates to be considered as early as possible within the Committee’s annual work programme. Appendix B therefore included outstanding items from last year’s Annual Governance Statement alongside new items for the current year. There were no significant issues to highlight at the present time with actions and activities remaining on-going.

The Corporate Director (Operations and Delivery) gave a short oral update on the Governance Principle/Issue “Determining the interventions necessary to optimise the achievement of the intended outcomes (Housing Review)” and responded to a Member’s question thereon.

Appointment of Independent Person(s) to the Audit Committee

The Committee recalled that, at its last meeting, it had endorsed the appointment of at least two Independent Persons to the Audit Committee and it had requested that Officers reviewed the associated arrangements and presented a plan to the next meeting of the Committee.  

The necessary review had been undertaken with a proposed action plan and timetable presented within the ‘Background’ section of the report (A.3).

Continuing External Audit delays and an update on the External Auditor’s work on the Council’s Statement of Accounts 2020/21 – 2022/23

Members were advised that the outcomes from the Government’s consultation exercise were being reviewed as they had only recently been published.  However, the Government had stated that they intended to continue with the proposed statutory backstop approach, albeit with slightly amended dates as follows:-

For accounts up to and including 2022/23 – 13 December 2024

For the 2023/24 accounts – 28 February 2025

For the 2024/25 accounts – 27 February 2026

For the 2025/26 accounts – 31 January 2027

For the 2026/27 accounts – 30 November 2027

For the 2027/28 accounts – 30 November 2028

The Government had confirmed that they had laid in Parliament the necessary Regulations as well as a new Code of Audit Practice, which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47.