To receive a presentation from the South West Audit Partnership.

David Hill and Lisa Fryer, from South West Audit Partnership (SWAP), had attended the meeting to provide a presentation to the Committee as a way of introduction and to explain how SWAP worked. Areas that the presentation covered included:

·         SWAP company overview

·         Governance arrangements

·         Mission and vision

·         Strategic objectives

·         What would change with SWAP and what the future of internal audit could look like

·         The audit opinions and recommendations that SWAP would give RBWM

·         One page reporting

·         Adding value – both with resources and training

Councillor Sharpe asked what ‘disruptive technologies’ would be implemented by SWAP, as had been mentioned in the presentation.

David Hill said that there were two ways of dealing with data and decisions had to be made around the data that had been presented. A new analyser tool would be coming in, SWAP were happy to show the Committee the tools that were used at a future meeting.

Adele Taylor added that the disruptive technology would be used by SWAP as part of their role and how they operated. Anything that RBWM could learn as part of the process would be taken on board. She was supportive of one-page dashboards.

Councillor Bhangra asked how long SWAP had been around for.

David Hill informed Councillor Bhangra that SWAP had been established in 2005, with two Somerset councils joining initially. The organisation had grown significantly since then and now had around 80 staff and a good number of councils which it worked with.

Councillor L Jones said that she welcomed one-page reports from internal audit, dense reports did not give Committee Members the information that they needed. This would give the Committee a much better overview of where the issues were.

Councillor Hilton commented on the training and said that this was good to see. He asked what the relationship with the external auditors would be like.

David Hill said that SWAP had traditionally had a good relationship with external auditors but over the past few years this had changed. Through various reviews, it was encouraged to get this relationship back again and this would be something that SWAP would be looking to implement at RBWM.

Councillor L Jones said SWAP would be in post from 1^st April 2022, she asked if there would be a priority list submitted to the auditors from the Executive Director of Resources.

Adele Taylor responded and said that the next item on the agenda was the Q1 internal audit plan which had been agreed between officers and SWAP and outlined the priority areas. This only covered Q1 as SWAP were not yet in post.

Councillor L Jones asked if it would therefore be a mix of priorities from officers and the internal auditors.

Adele Taylor confirmed that this was correct and said that the Committee would be part of the internal audit plans going forward.

The Chairman said that the Committee Members would like training and suggested that it would be good to have two sessions a year.

Councillor L Jones said that SWAP needed to understand RBWM before training could be provided.

David Hill said that training could be provided at any point, SWAP could then look to make it applicable for the Committee.

Adele Taylor said that training was something that officers had already agreed to look at for Committee Members and this would be part of a proposed suite of training.