Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 2

21 June 2023

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For Decision

Title: Intern­al Audit Report Man­age­ment Action Fol­low up ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

Pre­pared by:

• Paper: Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Executive
• Annex: Eliza­beth Young, Chief Intern­al Aud­it­or, Stephanie Hume, Seni­or Audit Man­ager, Azets

Pur­pose

This paper presents the intern­al aud­it­ors’ inde­pend­ent over­view of man­age­ment action taken on pre­vi­ous intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions raised and agreed. The fol­low-up review work repor­ted here is part of the intern­al audit pro­gramme agreed for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Note the pro­gress made by man­age­ment in imple­ment­ing agreed man­age­ment actions.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

Azets, the Park Authority’s Intern­al Aud­it­ors, have under­taken a fol­low-up review of action taken to address pre­vi­ous audit recom­mend­a­tions raised and agreed by the Com­mit­tee, to provide the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee with assur­ance that man­age­ment actions agreed in pre­vi­ous intern­al audit reports have been imple­men­ted appro­pri­ately. The report of their fol­low-up review is provided in full at the Annex to this paper. The report sum­mar­ises the pro­gress made by man­age­ment in imple­ment­ing agreed man­age­ment actions.

Azets have reviewed all open man­age­ment actions and liaised with Cairngorm Nation­al Park Author­ity staff to obtain an update on their imple­ment­a­tion pro­gress. This included man­age­ment identi­fy­ing actions which were no longer applic­able. For recom­mend­a­tions graded pri­or­ity 3 or above, Azets request evid­ence to val­id­ate com­ple­tion of any actions marked for clos­ure by management.

The fol­low-up review presen­ted by Azets shows that the teams across the Park Author­ity have made pro­gress in resolv­ing a num­ber of out­stand­ing issues, with 18 of 46 actions for fol­low up now resolved albeit some of those are sub­ject to evid­ence which is still to be sub­mit­ted to the intern­al audit team.

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Equally, it is recog­nised that a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of work remains to be done in bring­ing the list of out­stand­ing recom­mend­a­tions to a much reduced num­ber. We have now com­pleted recruit­ment into key posts with­in the Cor­por­ate Team to provide the staff capa­city needed to resource and lead many of these actions. We have also come through a peri­od of sig­ni­fic­ant work­load in sup­port of close of the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ fin­an­cial man­age­ment; devel­op­ment and approv­al of the new Cor­por­ate Plan to 2027 and Oper­a­tion­al Plan and budget for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄; man­aging a series of gov­ernance con­sid­er­a­tions; and sup­port­ing the Cairngorms 2023 Her­it­age Hori­zons bid pro­cess. We aim to use the com­ing six-month peri­od to focus on address­ing remain­ing actions.

Dav­id Cameron