Members of Rutland County Council Audit and Risk Committee have welcomed the news that the delivery of the 2022/23 internal audit plan is progressing well.

Speaking at their meeting on the 6th of December 2022, Rachel Ashley-Caunt, Chief Internal Auditor said: "The progress made to date in delivering the 2022/23 audit plan is 50% complete with the outcomes of completed audits summarised in the report.

"Also included is the outcome of the first of the rolling reviews of entries on the Strategic Risk Register, which seek to provide assurance over the existence and operation of the controls lists on the risk entries.

"There is one amendment to the Audit Plan proposed. Following the decision in October 2022 to defer the re-procurement of the waste contracts to enable consideration of waste infra-structure requirements, this audit work is no longer relevant. As such, it is proposed that the remaining audit days be applied to an audit of Business Continuity Management, given this feature as an amber residual risk on the council's Strategic Risk Register."

Lib Dem Cllr Abigail MacCartney, said: "This is a very good idea bearing in mind the staffing and recruiting issues that we've had in the past; I think this is a wonderful suggestion and something that would warrant attention."

Conservative Cllr Edward Baines, added: "I agree with that chair, enough time has been wasted on the decisions that were made several months ago on the waste contract. What I would like to know however, is what does the 'Business Continuity' strategy involve?"

Ms Ashley-Caunt replied: "It's a key audit that we do regularly across all the business organisations that we work with, and obviously it's a key risk for all organisations. We look to have a framework in place such as a business continuity plan at corporate level which is then underpinned by impact assessments across each of the service areas.

"This allows everybody to agree what needs to be back up and running first, how we prioritise our resources and deal with the different scenarios which could be a loss of property, loss of power, it could even be the loss of staff – but we work through each of those potential scenarios and then the resulting strategy would set out a framework of how we manage them."

The council's internal audit requests that officers provide monthly updates on all open audit actions.

Chairperson and Independent Cllr Alan Walters, asked: "Do we have any thoughts on the comments on the risk register – should we have one every now and again taking everything to pieces, or is it appropriate as is, and do we have any comments on that particular one?"

Ms Ashley-Caunt said: "There are currently no actions [on the risk register] rated as 'high' priority which have been overdue for implementation by more than three months; but there are 13 actions which are overdue for completion. It is standard practice for any audit reports receiving lower than satisfactory assurance opinions to be presented to the Audit and Risk Committee in full."

Members noted the updated report and looked forward to more updates at the next meeting of the committee which is on Monday, the 13th of February 2023.