Issue - meetings

Report by Chief Internal Auditor

The Committee gave consideration to a report containing the action plans in relation to the following 6 audits:

·         Early Years Provision

·         Traffic Regulation Orders

·         Land & Asset Disposal

·         School Fund Governance

·         Off-Payroll

·         Self-Directed Support

Discussion was had in respect of the Council’s approach to carrying out impact assessments to help inform policy decisions.  The Chair suggested that this could be a topic for future scrutiny. The Chief Internal Auditor confirmed that there would be no barrier to proposing this as a potential scrutiny topic and that it would be assessed against the scrutiny prioritisation process in the same way any proposed topic.  The timing of a potential review would be, to an extent, dictated by the timing of Part 3 of the  Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 coming into effect. This is the part of the Act which relates to island impact assessment. In addition to Part 3 of the Islands Act the review would also consider the Fairer Scotland Duty (Part 1 of the Equality Act 2010 which came into force on 1 April 2018)  which sets out the Council’s legal responsibility to actively consider how it can reduce inequalities of outcome caused by socioeconomic disadvantage, when making strategic decisions.   As a potential topic this may be considered for the 2020/21 scrutiny plan depending on whether the Part 3 of the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 has come into effect and on the presumption that there will be a body of evidence in place to enable effective scrutiny to be performed.

Decision:

The Audit and Scrutiny Committee agreed to endorse the summary report and detail within each individual report. 

(Reference:  Report by Chief Internal Auditor, dated 18 June 2019, submitted.)