CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 2 12/03/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY AUDIT & RISK COMMITTEE

FOR DECISION

Title: INTERN­AL AUDIT FOL­LOW UP REVIEW

Pre­pared by: CHRIS BROWN, AZETS STEPHANIE HUME, AZETS

Pur­pose

This paper presents Azets’ fol­low up review of action taken against intern­al audit recommendations.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Con­sider the intern­al auditor’s report fol­low­ing review of action taken on out­stand­ing intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions; b) Approve revised timetables for action provided by man­age­ment as set out in the intern­al auditor’s report.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. The Park Authority’s intern­al aud­it­ors, Azets, have reviewed action taken over the course of ²⁰⁄₂₁ by man­age­ment on audit recom­mend­a­tions. The report is set out in full at Annex I to this paper.

2. The report notes that planned action to address a num­ber of pri­or intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions has been delayed by the impact of COVID19 restric­tions and imple­ment­a­tion of busi­ness con­tinu­ity arrange­ments since March 2020.

3. The ini­tial focus in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ has been on imple­ment­ing the Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity Plan (BCP) and adapt­ing the organ­isa­tion to remote work­ing arrange­ments. Sub­sequently, the flow of work was to design and deliv­er new strategies and pro­grammes to address the vari­ous issues faced in ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁, such as the Green Recov­ery Plan, Green Recov­ery Grant Fund, and Sea­son­al Ranger Ser­vice. The end of the year has rever­ted to a focus on final­ising deliv­ery of ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ oper­a­tion­al plans and sup­port­ing devel­op­ment of oper­a­tion­al plans for the com­ing year. This ongo­ing repri­or­it­isa­tion of staff resource, and con­tin­ued imple­ment­a­tion of remote work­ing arrange­ments, has sig­ni­fic­antly restric­ted the capa­city to act as inten­ded on improve­ment actions address­ing pri­or audit findings.

4. We are con­scious that a num­ber of these out­stand­ing recom­mend­a­tions are now a num­ber of years old. We will give pri­or­ity to address­ing these out­stand­ing recom­mend­a­tions as we plan to build sys­tems sup­port­ing the planned exit from cur­rent BCP arrange­ments, and in design of sys­tems sup­port­ing deliv­ery of the ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ budget and oper­a­tion­al plan.

Dav­id Camer­on 4 March 2021 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk