Agenda item

Grant Thornton (no decision required)

Jackson Murray from Grant Thornton introduced himself to the Committee; he would be replacing Peter Smith as Audit Manager for Cheltenham.  He referred members to the update which had been circulated with the agenda and explained that there were two parts to the update, the first detailed progress against the current work plan.  He confirmed that work on the 2014-15 Audit had recently commenced and that the Audit Plan would be tabled at the next scheduled meeting, following completion of the interim audit work.  His colleague, Katie Haines, was leading on this and it was expected that this work would be completed by early February, with the Final Audit being undertaken between June and September 2015.  He noted that there were no other areas of work at this time, though there had been other activity undertaken by the Forensic Audit Team at Grant Thornton in relation to the AG&M overspend.  The second part of the update summarised emerging national issues and developments which were relevant to the work of the committee and which members may find useful.

The Director Resources advised the committee that the reports that had been referenced had been discussed at the liaison meetings, with hard copied circulated internally, as well as copies placed in the members’ room.

A member asked the representative of Grant Thornton to share his thoughts on the reoccurring references, in the various case studies, relating to a council’s ability to oversee and influence policy within organisations (shared services, partnerships, local authority companies, etc) to maximise the benefit for residents (profit) and minimise any loss.  Jackson Murray explained that he had not been involved in any of the individual case studies but felt that going forward, into further alternative delivery models, the council would have to ensure that it fully understood the implications and/or restrictions of any governance arrangements being entered into.  The Director Resources outlined some of the commissioning decisions of the last couple of years.  For each of the service delivery models that had been adopted, full consideration of governance arrangements had been given to the various options and this, along with due diligence and risk assessments were identified in the respective reports. Arrangements for the sharing of surpluses had been considered and built into the legal agreements.  The issue of golden shares had been discussed in relation to Ubico, but Cheltenham and Cotswolds had decided that attracting more partners would deliver the maximum benefits for residents, better enable countywide objectives to be met and that any such ‘golden shares arrangement’ could discourage prospective new partners.  The Head of Audit Cotswolds, who was undertaking a PHD in Shared Service Governance, agreed to arrange a workshop for members, in which he would set out the various governance arrangements in place at the council and how they were monitored.  Members were happy with the proposed approach. 

In response to a member question, the Head of Audit Cotswolds advised that the figure of £876 million within the anti-fraud and corruption update represented 1% of total procurement spend, but there was some dispute over this figure as it also included military procurement. 

The Chairman referred members to the concerns expressed by Transparency International, that audit committees were unable to fulfil the function of reducing risk in many authorities and queried whether this was the case at this authority.  Officers reminded members that this committee had reviewed the risk management policy and the risk management process, which was far less ambiguous than it had previously been and as a result of which, the council was far better at risk management then it had been.  The Governance, Risk and Compliance Officer had applied the Audit Committee Effectiveness Checklist some three years ago and would do it again, this would highlight areas of strength and identify any training requirements. 

There were no recommendations.