Issue - meetings

The Committee considered a report on progress made by the Council’s internal audit manager (KPMG) on their internal audit plan for 2021-22 for the period April to October 2021, which included a summary of the work that they had concluded since the previous report to Committee and what they had planned to do ahead of the next.  The report also provided an executive summary of three internal audit reports which examined Key Learnings from Covid, Safeguarding, and the Future Guildford Programme. 

In relation to Key Learnings from Covid, the Committee noted that this had an Amber/ Green assurance rating (significant assurance with minor improvement opportunities). KPMG had noted good practice around the roll out of IT, the quick establishment of robust governance structures, with key findings and recommendations around formally taking minutes of meetings, regular action tracking, and the review and testing of business continuity plans.

In relation to the Safeguarding report, the Committee was informed that this had received an Amber/Red assurance rating (partial assurance with improvements required), which was below management's forecast.  The Committee’s attention was drawn to the Supplementary Information Sheet which included the agreed management responses to KPMG’s recommendations. KPMG had noted good practice in that the management had started to introduce a safeguarding governance structure and that there were guides in place to support staff in the safeguarding referrals process.  Their findings and recommendations were around clarity over policy review and approval schedules, the content of the policy, the training framework in place and in particular the ownership of monitoring training schedules and monitoring compliance with training and also around maintaining a central log of all safeguarding referrals made.

The third of the Internal Audit reports on the Future Guildford programme had received an Amber/Green assurance rating, which was in line with management's forecast.  KPMG had noted good practice around the regular reporting of progress on the programme to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, regular meetings of the main programme board with consistent agenda items and strong initial consultations with staff.  KPMG’s recommendations for this report related to undertaking a formal ‘lessons learned’ exercise.

KPMG also drew attention to a new element of their progress reports which involved sending satisfaction questionnaires with all of their final reports to the Executive sponsor.  The results of the questionnaires relating to the HRA/Right to Buy receipts and performance monitoring reviews were set out in their report.

In debating this item, the Committee raised the following points:

·       In response to a question as to why the Council’s Safeguarding performance was unsatisfactory, the Committee noted that part of the problem related to identifying the Council’s role given that Surrey County Council was the statutory authority for safeguarding.  It was also noted that where the Council had referred safeguarding cases to Surrey, there had been little feedback on the outcome or any learning points arising.  The Committee felt that the Surrey Safeguarding Board should be requested to establish better communication with partners regarding the outcome of cases referred together with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41