The Assistant Director Corporate Performance clarified to the Committee that the report was also going to the Finance & Audit Committee as they play an active role in governance arrangements, of which Internal Audit and Fraud play an active part. 

The Assistant Director Corporate Performance advised the Committee there had been significant progress with the partnership, including:

·         The transfer of the Audit team to Medway is confirmed to happen on the 1 December 2015

·         Two of the three necessary consultation exercises have been completed with staff members under the TUPE regulations

·         The third consultation will happen the day before the transfer

·         An IT consultant had been in to talk with staff members about the Medway system and how the network share will work – they will be able to use both of the Medway and Gravesham systems at once under the same firewall protection 

·         A partnership agreement between the two organisations is in the final stages of completion

The Assistant Director Corporate Performance advised the Committee that this is the first shared service partnership of a back office system; there are already partnerships for front line areas such as CCTV and Building Control.

The Assistant Director Corporate Performance highlighted that:

·         The transfer of staff to the Department of Work & Pensions in relation to the introduction of the Single Fraud Investigation Service would be completed by March 2016, and the affected staff would be consulted appropriately on this transfer.  Following this transfer the final partnership arrangement would be put in place with effect from 1 April 2016, and consideration therefore needs to be given to how this will be performance managed from that date.

·         The opportunity has been taken to look at other authorities to glean information about their shared arrangements and the performance management arrangements put in place, as shown in Appendix 2 to the report.

Following a question from a Member, the Assistant Director Corporate Performance clarified that there will be transparency over the proposed new structures and staff members will have to apply for their positions within the new partnership as appropriate.

A Member raised concerns over the governance arrangements for the new partnership which the Assistant Director Corporate Performance assured the Committee is set out in the draft agreement currently being finalized.

Post transfer to Medway Council (1 December 2015), an agreed amount would be paid to Medway for the salaries of the officers which will in due course result in savings to GBC; the structure will result in a saving in excess of the reduction in the Housing Grant.

Following several questions from the Committee, the Assistant Director Corporate Performance highlighted the following:

·         This is a partnership deal so the annual audit plan and recruiting etc are all done jointly which means there is also shared risk as well as shared rewards

·         The performance indicators for the Fraud & Audit team on Pages 14 & 15 of the report would be retained

·         Medway’s performance management indicators are currently being reviewed by the Audit & Assurance Manager.

·         There is a contractual agreement  with Medway that they have to meet GBC’s Audit Plan; should standards fall short after the audit days are completed the Assistant Director Corporate Performance has the power to terminate the contract

·         External auditors look at the internal auditors audit plan on an annual basis  and form a judgement that a high level of assurance can be taken from the service

·         Whenever Internal Audit carry out a piece of assurance work, customer satisfaction questionnaires are issued in relation to auditor conduct and overall audit service

Following a question from the Vice-Chair, the Assistant Director Corporate Performance explained that he would be receiving quarterly reports so they could be made available to the Committee on a quarterly basis, the Committee welcomed this suggestion.

A Member of the Committee identified that there has been a shift towards consultancy work – around 20% of the work programme has moved to consultancy services.

The Assistant Director Corporate Performance suggested below some more performance indictors to Members which the Committee agreed to being added to the existing framework:

• The proportion of available resources spent on productive assurance work
• The proportion of the agreed internal audit plan achieved
• The numbers of follow up and progress reviews issued, not yet due, or now due for a follow up
• Compliance with the Public Sector Internal Audit Standards
• Cost per audit day
• Proportion of qualified staff within the team
• Proportion of staff who are currently undertaking training

• Days spent on CPD per head of the team