Freedom of information response

Question

Response

The number of schools that haven’t been audited since January 1, 2019

0

Of these schools, the name of the school(s) with the longest wait since its last internal audit. I would like you to also state the year in which the school(s) was last audited.

N/A

Does the council publish the findings from its audit reports in the public domain? If so, it would be appreciated if you could state whether the council names schools, how they are published and provide me with any relevant links.

Summaries of all Internal Audit engagements are reported to the Audit Committee at periodic intervals.  These can be found here:

Audit Committee – 11 July 2024 +

Standards and Audit Committee – Pre July 2024

The summary outcomes from the audit were reported to the Standards and Audit Committee in September 2019 – page 4.  The school was named within this report.

The number of council investigations launched on the back of local authority-maintained school internal audit reports, along with information on what the investigation centred on, the year(s) the probe took place and a copy of the investigation report.

0

Council guidance outlining how often, when and why internal audits are carried out.

The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 sets out the requirement for organisations to have an effective Internal Audit resource.

The Public Sector Internal Audit Standards mandate that a risk based internal audit plan is created periodically and kept under regular review.

The Internal Audit plan is reported to and agreed by the Audit Committee.

The Internal Audit Charter is a formal document that defines the Internal Audit’s purpose, authority, responsibility and position with an organisation.  The Charter sets out how Internal Audit will conduct its work to enable the organisation to achieve its objectives.

Audit engagements are added to the Internal Audit Plan on the basis of a formal risk assessment, against the Council’s strategic aims, objectives and risks.  There is no requirement for individual audit engagements to be repeated at regular intervals - the frequency of audit reviews will be determined on the basis of risk.

The Internal Audit plan is also created in consideration of other assurance work carried out by other internal and external services.  This is to avoid duplication of work and to enable audit resources to be deployed most effectively, where there has been no other recent assurance activity.

The Internal Audit Plan determines the timing, scope and frequency of each audit engagement identified.  This is agreed with the services / clients based on capacity and service pressures. 

The 2024/25 Internal Audit Plan was reported to Audit Committee on 11 July 2024.

All audit engagements from the Internal Audit Plan are completed in accordance with the Public Sector Internal Audit Standards and the Internal Audit Manual. The Internal Audit Manual is currently under review to ensure it complies with the Global Internal Audit Standards, which come into force from 9 January 2025.

The Internal Audit plan is kept under review throughout the year and the scope of individual audits can be amended in-year, in order to ensure the work provides most value to the organisation.