Decision details

The Interim Finance Governance Lead, Sian Kenny, presented the report, highlighting: that at its meeting in January 2024, the Audit Committee were presented with Grant Thornton’s Joint Auditor’s Annual Report to Somerset Council 2022/23, which included a summary of findings and recommendations, accompanied by the Council’s management response;  that the report provided an update on progress and a detailed action plan developed to address the recommendations; that the progress of actions to be monitored by the Performance, Risk and Budget Board (PRBB); that the action plan will be monitored in the Ideagen system; the 25 actions associated with the seven key recommendations; and that an update on progress against the improvement recommendations will be provided at future Audit Committee meetings.

The Audit Committee asked a number of questions and made a number of comments which were responded to at the meeting, as follows:

• The clear and helpful style, presentation and format of the action plan to visually track the progress of issues and helpful use of cover reports to separate agenda items.
• The end of year action delivery due dates - 31st of March 2025, the detailed communication with senior officers responsible for delivering the action
• The financial sustainability developing and delivering mitigating actions to manage demand and costs in relation to Children and Adult Services and the differences in progress to embed and deliver the transformation programme.
• The continuing developing financial process relating to interfaces, invoice payments and data validation, including development of interface dashboard extraction of data.
• The governance (internal and external), level of challenge and detailed information held in the system to record and inform the progress report against the actions and the work to develop the system to incorporate risk and improve efficiency of finding and connecting information.
• The sharing of PRBB information and recommendations - The Chair, PRBB, undertook to provide regular PRBB updates to the Audit Committee Chair and Vice Chair.

• The regular reporting of procurement waivers to Audit Committee – The Clerk, Audit Committee undertook to add to the Audit Committee workplan for 2024/25.
• Progress against the Recommendations of the Interim Auditor’s Annual Report 2022/23 reporting frequency - The Clerk, Audit Committee undertook to add to the Audit Committee workplan for 2024/25.

The Audit Committee noted the progress made against the actions in relation to the Key Recommendations of the report.