Councillor Walker Item 16, Table D, declared a personal interest as she has a close family member on the Housing register.

With regards to answers given under the Establishment, Operation and Duties section, Role and Remit;

·         The Governance Committee does make a formal report to Council detailing its work, on a half yearly basis

·         The Committee received regular updates from Grant Thornton in relation to topical legal and regulatory issues

·         There was an opportunity for members to meet, (with no Officers present), with the Head of Internal Audit and External Auditors prior to the Committee and this meeting could be reinstated if so required

·         The Chief Financial Officer does assess the performance of external audit via an independent assessor.

Membership, induction and training;

·         It was a statutory requirement that new Governance Committee members received an induction and appropriate training

·         All training had been provided

Financial Reporting and Regulatory matters;

·         A full cycle of the Committee had not yet taken place but that a review of management’s letter of representation was carried out as part of the conclusion of the audit process

·         The 17 audits in the 2018/19 plan were now all complete

·         There were 18 audits in the 2019/20 plan, four of which would not be completed by the end of March 2020

·         Two final reports had been issued on the Business Continuity 2018/19 and Treasury Management 2019/20.

·         There was a robust plan moving forwards into 2020/21 under the new arrangement with Devon Audit Partnership

In response to a question the Head of Resources advised that Mazars would not be paid the full internal audit fee for 2019/20 as a proportion of the plan would not be completed.

The Deputy Head of the Devon Audit Partnership introduced himself and assured the Committee that their firm had a resilient staffing level with a wide pool of skill sets.  40 staff were available to carry out audit duties with a set number focussing on North Devon to become familiar with North Devon Council.

·         23 identified areas and associated Corporate risks

·         National Fraud Initiative was an annual review as well us duties of the Crematorium

·         A new risk added to this plan was Climate change which would be audited by means of looking at the Authority’s response to climate change initiatives.

·         Cyber audits could be a two to three year piece of work

·         Council tax and benefits was being looked at within areas such as discounts

·         The plan was likely to respond and change throughout the year

·         The strategy set out how the audit was to be delivered

·         The scope of the audit

·         What the audit objectives were

·         Build up an overall opinion on the framework

·         Findings to be presented at the end of the year in the annual report

·         The Charter was a document setting out how the Devon Audit Partnership would deliver their audit

·         It was known as their terms of reference document, setting out who reports to whom, accountability, responsibilities and their professional relationship

·         There was an annual requirement for the Charter to be refreshed.

·         The external auditors would be visiting North Devon Council in the next month as part of the interim audit

·         Last year had been the hardest year experienced in terms of meeting obligations due to changes in regulations and staff losses

·         The draft accounts were due to be received in May

·         The final accounts were due to be audited in July but the auditors were in dialogue with the Council early as this deadline was not going to be achieved by Grant Thornton

·         Grant Thornton would be providing narrative explaining reasons for the late submission of the final audit

·         The recent Brydon review related to all auditors and calls for a review of the auditing process something which Grant Thornton supported

·         The Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government had last July announced that a review of public sector audits was to be undertaken to determine whether current audit arrangements were “fit for purpose”

·         The detail and size of accounts was growing and this led to the lay person not engaging or reading documents as a 300 plus page document on some councils accounts was off putting

·         The purpose of the letter was to explain the additional works to be undertaken and costs involved with that to be charged in 2019/20

·         The proposal was an uplift of fee, last year’s additional fee was £4,500 and the proposal for 2019/20 was an additional fee of £7,500 over and above the scale fee which was subject to ratification and sign off

·         Pension liability was looked at in greater detail and this was a large area of work to be undertaken

·         The materiality was set at £1.1- million for the Authority which equated to 2% of the prior year gross expenditure for the year.  North Devon Council were considered a low risk.

·         A new risk identified was International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 16 Leases.

·         No recommendations had been included in table B (recommendations completed since the last meeting of the Governance Committee)

·         Table C detailed 3 recommendations for which time extensions were being requested.  Recommendation 16 PL 03 S106 was requesting an extension to date as this software module was still being worked on.  Requests, 17 RM&CG 02 and 19 CG&RM 01 were seeking extensions to 31^st March 2020

Councillor Walker declared a personal interest in relation to information on Table D.

·         Table D detailed 1 outstanding recommendation, 15 HN (CBL) 01, which the Head of Environmental Health and Housing confirmed had actually now been completed

·         Recommendation 14 AGS 02 was reliant on other recommendations being completed

RESOLVED:

(a)  That the extensions to timescales requested in the Audit Recommendation Tracker  be approved; and

(b)  That the Audit Recommendation Tracker be noted

(a)  That, under Section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public and press be excluded from the meeting for the following item as it involved the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3 of Part 1 of the Schedule 12A of the Act (as amended from time to time), namely information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information).

(b)  That, all documents and reports relating to the item be confirmed as “Not for Publication”.

·         Hand sanitizers and hand washing instructions had been emailed to all staff and posters were displayed around the building

·         The authority was following guidelines set out by Public Health England