Venue: Remotely via Teams
Contact: Michelle Roberts, Scrutiny Officer
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Disclosures of Personal and Prejudicial Interest Minutes: Item 5 – Cllr Mike White, Wendy Fitzgerald, Phil Downing and Chris Holley |
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Prohibition of Whipped Votes and Declaration of Party Whips Minutes: None |
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Minutes of Previous Meeting PDF 222 KB Minutes: The Panel accepted the minutes of the previous meeting on the 24 June 2021. |
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Public Questions Questions must be submitted in writing, no
later than noon on the working day prior to the meeting.
Questions must relate to items on the agenda. Questions will be dealt with in a 10-minute period. Minutes: No public questions were received. |
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The Auditing of Procurement PDF 238 KB The Chief Auditor will attend to present the report and discuss issues with the Panel. Additional documents: Minutes: The Council’s Chief Auditor provided a report and attended the meeting. The Panel sent a number of key questions that they asked him to address in his report, they included: 1.
Can you outline the role of Audit in procurement in the Council? 2.
What is the main guidance for auditing procurement? 3.
How do you look at probity, competence, consistency of approach
and alignment with the Councils strategies and objectives, and how? 4. Do you look whether the
procurement is cost effective and transparent in its practice, and how? 5.
Do you also look at how the council ensures it is procuring
locally, ethically and greenly where possible, and how? 6.
Do you look at whether procurement activities align the Wellbeing
of Future Generations Act, and how? 7.
How do you Audit joint procurement activity and how? 8.
Is the Councils procurement activity also externally audited and
by whom? 9.
Can you provide the Panel with an example of an internal audit of
a procurement activity? The report supplied will form part of the evidence pack at the end of the inquiry along with the following issues raised in the resulting discussion: ·
Audit do not just look at cost alone but also
value for money. Cost effectiveness is
considered and it is recognised that other criteria not just cost need to be
taken into account. ·
Audit look at compliance rather than strategic
direction. Directors will outline that
aspect. ·
Schools are audited on a rolling programme,
thematic audits on procurement this year due to access restrictions caused by
Covid. Most schools are audited on a 3 yearly basis. The audit covers overall financial matters
but includes procurement aspects.
Overall learning from these exercises are communicated to schools via
the schools bulletin. An Annual Audit of
Schools report is also completed that is looked at by the Governance and Audit
Committee. A copy of this report was
appended as an example of work completed when auditing. ·
It was suggested by a panel member that schools
could be advised to have a sub-committee or standing item on their Finance Committee’s
relating to Procurement. The Panel heard
that this is something that Chris Williams and Helen Morgan Rees are looking at
currently, both agreeing that it would be a positive move. ·
P Cards very useful as they are audited
regularly but schools do not currently use them. This is because they use a different system
based around Sims computer system, they have a multi-pay cards and transactions
are recorded via a monthly statement that is uploaded onto Oracle on a monthly
basis. Audit ensure they have been
checked and signed off by the Headteacher, they are tracked. Moving over to P Cards would be difficult as
currently there are two computers systems and schools have delegated budgets
and responsibility. ·
The Panel asked how risk is worked out, especially
given recent events with Covid and also where companies go bust. The Panel heard that the procurement process
is designed to highlight any risks. With
financial due diligence assessed, ethical supplies agreement etc., there is a
range of strict criteria in place to assess risk. ·
If higher risk is identified then the potential
contract is passed to the Finance Department who look at ways of mitigating
that risk with for example Bonds. ·
The Panel heard that we do have a strong and
robust procurement process of which Audit is part. Audit have a rolling programme of audits to
check against Contract Procedure Rules.
Heads of Service understand the value of these audits. ·
We do not currently have external audit and we
do not use external/3rd Party risk assessors/providers for
contracts. We are provided with software
from Welsh Government that provides us with any ‘flags’ that we need to be
aware of. The Panel wondered if this
Welsh Government system could also be used to rate Environment and Ethical
status too. This would then be of
benefit to Local Authorities across the whole of Wales. ·
The possibility of including environmental and
ethical issues in our internal process was raised. They considered whether it would or should
fit into this audit process. They
recognised that currently the Councils Audit process in financially based and
this would require changes to contract procedure rules. It would require broadening the scope of
testing. The Panel will consider this
issue further as part of their inquiry.
Chris Williams told the panel that he is currently working with Welsh
Government on how to improve their directions for
Local Government, developing a new centre for excellence and WG are taking a
lead on this. Other issues outside of
the financial are to be considered as part of this work. He also said that each department has a
service plan of which environment and ethical considerations form part. |
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Inquiry Project Plan PDF 123 KB Minutes: The Panel reviewed and accepted their Inquiry Project Plan. |