Agenda item

The Head of Internal Audit to submit a report advising the Committee of the outcomes of an assessment of this Council’s Counter Fraud arrangements and the development of the Counter Fraud Action Plan.

The Head of Internal Audit

(a)          submitted a report (copies of which had previously been circulated to Members) advising the Committee of the outcomes of an assessment of this Council’s Counter Fraud arrangements and the development of the Counter Fraud Action Plan;

(b)          advised that Appendix A of the report detailed the score achieved by this Council against each of the key areas identified in the Code of Practice on Managing Fraud and Corruption.

(c)          confirmed that overall, this Council was meeting the standard set out in the CIPFA Code of Practice on Managing the Risk of Fraud and Corruption.  This was a positive report, revealing this Council scored highly on its strategies, due to officer and Member support of counter fraud;

(d)          advised that when this Council’s Counter Fraud and Corruption Policy and Fraud Response Plan were updated in 2016/17, Internal Audit had recommended that a separate action plan be developed and maintained to ensure that the counter fraud arrangements were constantly monitored and strengthened and that best practice was adopted wherever possible.  This was at Appendix B of the report and showed all areas for possible improvement identified in the assessment against the CIPFA Code of Practice and any other areas already identified by management or Internal Audit;

(e)          confirmed that all actions within the Action Plan had been allocated an owner and timescale for implementation.  Progress against the Action Plan would be monitored by Internal Audit on a quarterly basis and it was proposed that an update be reported to this Committee on a six monthly basis.

A Member highlighted ‘Principle B – Fraud risk identification is essential to understand specific exposure to risk, changing patterns in fraud and corruption threats and the potential consequences to the organisation and its service users.  Score 53%’ within Appendix A, noting that this was rather a low score and asking whether staff training was needed to improve this.

The Head of Internal Audit explained that the score was the same across all local authorities and highlighted that this Council did successfully meet the criteria laid down in the CIPFA Code of Practice.  Improvement of this was detailed within Appendix A.  Staff had undertaken Fraud Awareness training and Money Laundering training and no further staff training was recommended.

The Chief Executive highlighted that as part of International Fraud Awareness Week, (commenced 13 November to 2017), this Council had taken the opportunity to raise awareness across the Council of top fraud risks and what all staff could do to prevent fraudsters from targeting this Council.  A key fraud risk area was focussed on and advice and support on tackling this was sent to staff via email on a daily basis.  There appeared to be good awareness across this Council.

RESOLVED that the

(1)          outcome of the assessment of this Council’s Counter Fraud Arrangements against the CIPFA Code of Practice for Managing Fraud and Corruption and the new Counter Fraud Action Plan be noted;

(2)          proposal for presentation of six monthly updates against this Plan to this Committee by the Head of Internal Audit be approved.