Auditors - is anyone listening to them ?

The audit committee met 5 times in the Council year ended 31 March 2011.

The Councillors currently on the audit committee are :-

Chairman - Monroe Palmer OBE, BA, FCA

Vice-chairman - Brian Schama

Members

Alex Brodkin

Geof Cooke

Tom Davey

Sury Khatri

Graham Old

Jack Cohen

Substitutes

Susette Palmer

Alan Schneiderman

Mark Shooter

Agnes Slocombe

Andreas Tambourides

These meetings come with huge amounts of information to be digested and Mr Mustard has looked at the amount of time being spent on this business in the committee meetings, and his findings are as follows :-

Date	Pages	Minutes	Secs. per page
21/06/2010	98	147	90
21/09/2010	79	172	131
07/12/2010	249	164	40
17/02/2011	104	88	51
24/03/2011	144	110	46
16/06/2011	268	tba

so there we have it, as little as 40 seconds is spent in the meetings on each page of the agenda and report pack.

Now Mr Mustard thinks there might be the odd conscientious Councillor who reads everything sent to them and sends in a list of questions in advance so that they can be dealt with at the meeting. He doubted however that would be the case for most of the Councillors who seem content to let the Officers do as they please. So he asked the vastly more experienced Mr Reasonable if Councillors do their homework and with permission he now reprints one of Mr Reasonable's blogs.

One Barnet - The numbers don't add up!

Last night Mr Reasonable attended the Cabinet meeting to ask a question about the costs and benefits of the One Barnet programme. Having read all of the details (or should I say lack of details) it strikes me that there are some huge gaps in the thinking about One Barnet. Last night I asked if Cabinet members had checked the figures to which I got a charming but evasive response from the Leader. I then asked why none of the figures stated in various documents actually reconcile against one another. I gave the example of the E recruitment programme where the figures in three separate council documents are all different - "so which one is correct" I asked. A very neat pass to the Deputy Chief Executive who looked a little flustered and said he would look into it. Disappointing especially as the next agenda item which was considering the privatisation of a raft of council departments contained a £1.25m error (Page 33 section 6.3). We, the council tax payers of Barnet, are paying a fortune for all these highly paid council officials. We are paying a fortune for a host of assorted and highly paid consultants. Why then can we not get a single, clear and evidence based set of figures on the costs and benefits of One Barnet. 

The Councillors receive generous allowances and the Officers get stratospheric salaries or consultancy fees. Mr Mustard thinks it is high time that you all pulled your socks up, did some proper work and abandoned the whole OneBarnet idea and every other stupidly named hare-brained scheme that has been trotted out recently. All the residents want is decent services - no spin, no frills, no "no contract" situations, no trips to the Sandbanks Hotel, no flying off to USA with BT, no huge TV's etc etc . Back to basics boring commonsense Council.

Mr Mustard is just going to highlight one aspect of these reports, you can find them all on the Council website at the following location :- http://s.coop/1xxd

Select the year you want, then meeting type of "other" then "Audit Committee" to obtain your selection and then click on each date and then each item - tedious but the best that Barnet Council can do.

Each quarter the Internal Auditor reports on the completed audits they have carried out that quarter and an annual report at the end of the year. These appear to have been planned audits so the departments due for audit really ought to pull their socks up beforehand and get everything spick & span - the fact that there are then unsatisfactory outcomes is a very poor performance. School audits have been ignored as Mr Mustard concentrates on the Council itself.

These are the assurance levels that the Council measures the systems of the Council by.

Substantial	There is a sound system of internal control designed to achieve the system objectives. The control processes tested are being consistently applied.
Satisfactory	While there is a basically sound system of internal control, there are weaknesses, which put some of the client’s objectives at risk. There is evidence that the level of non-compliance with some of the control processes may put some of the system objectives at risk.
Limited	Weaknesses in the system of internal controls are such as to put the client’s objectives at risk. The level of non-compliance puts the system objectives at risk.
No Assurance	Control processes are generally weak leaving the processes/systems open to significant error or abuse. Significant non-compliance with basic control processes leaves the processes/systems open to error or abuse.

Mr Mustard prefers a more simple way of thinking of these categories:-

Substantial = Exemplary

Satisfactory = OK-ish but could do better

Limited = Exertion required

No assurance = Extremely bad.

Now here is a table of all the reports completed in the year ended 31 March 2011

Systems Audits	Assurance
Housing Benefits	Substantial
Performance Management – Children’s Services	Satisfactory
National Indicator (NI) 179 – Value for money	Satisfactory
Stroke Grant	Satisfactory
Project Governance – Pothole Elimination Scheme	Satisfactory
Council Tax	Satisfactory
NNDR Business Rates	Satisfactory
Compliance with Financial Regulations	Satisfactory
Environmental Health	Satisfactory
Fire Safety	Satisfactory
Cashless Parking	Limited
Debit/Credit cards	Limited
Council Tax, NNDR and Housing Benefit replacement	Limited
Independent Provider Performance – BRSI	Limited
Independent Provider Performance – SEN	Limited
Business Continuity (Council wide)	Limited
Reviewing (learning disabilities)	Limited
Safer Recruitment	Limited
Special Education Needs Placements	Limited
Cash book control and reconciliation	Limited
Equalities	Limited
Grant arrangements	Limited
LG Pension Administration	Limited
Budgetary Control (Children’s Service)	Limited
Capital Programme/funding	Limited
Freedom of Information	Limited
Corporate Procurement	Limited
Data Quality (Adults Social Services)	Limited
Recruitment, HR, Payroll	Limited
Sustainability	Limited
Treasury Management	Limited
Waste Prevention	Limited
Income and Debt management	Limited
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (Information Services)	Limited
Member Allowances	Limited
Street Lighting – PFI	Limited
CRB checks	Limited
LAA Grant	Limited
Risk Management – Children’s Services	Limited
Parking Service	No
Environmental Health – compliance	No

There are two other Satisfactory audits mentioned in the text of the report but they do not seem to have been listed.

So in summary there are the following audits findings :-

Status	No.	%
Substantial	1	2
Satisfactory	11	26
Limited	29	67
No	2	5

So that is 72% ( or 7 departments out of 10 if you prefer ) that are below an acceptable standard. 

72% of the management should be ashamed or you could just get your coats.

The previous year the below satisfactory departments were 67% which was bad enough but then with all the concentration on OneBarnet the day to day management appears to have been neglected.

So Councillors and Officers, are you listening ?

The bloggers will be listening most attentively on Thursday evening.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard