Paper 5 Internal Audit Report Follow-up Review Cover

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 5 13 March 2026 Page 1 of 2

For decision

Title: Intern­al audit plan ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆: Fol­low up review

Cov­er Paper: Louise Allen, Head of Fin­ance and Cor­por­ate Operations

Report sub­mit­ted by: Peter Clark, Scott McCready, wbg

Pur­pose

This paper presents the Intern­al Auditor’s review of the imple­ment­a­tion of recom­mend­a­tions made in pre­vi­ous intern­al audit reviews and was con­duc­ted as part of the agreed plan of work for 2025 – 26 (Annex 1). The pur­pose of this review was: a) To assess wheth­er the Park Author­ity has appro­pri­ately imple­men­ted any out­stand­ing intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions made in pri­or years.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to a) Con­sider the intern­al aud­it­ors report and find­ings. b) Endorse the man­age­ment responses to recom­mend­a­tions for future action and improvements.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. Wbg have com­pleted their intern­al audit review of the Park Authority’s response to recom­mend­a­tions made in pre­vi­ous intern­al audit reports.

2. Only a weak level of assur­ance was provided that the Author­ity has endeav­oured to imple­ment intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions raised in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ and the pre­vi­ous years. A sum­mary of the com­plete­ness of work on pri­or recom­mend­a­tions is provided in the Exec­ut­ive Summary:

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 5 13 March 2026 Page 2 of 2

Grad­ing of Recom­mend­a­tions	High	Medi­um	Low	Total
Appendix A — Not Imple­men­ted Recommendations	-	4	-	4
Appendix B — Par­tially Imple­men­ted Recommendations	1	4	-	5
Fully Imple­men­ted Recommendations	-	2	1	3

1. Many of the remain­ing recom­mend­a­tions involve sub­stan­tial work, which is being delivered gradu­ally along­side busi­ness-as-usu­al activ­it­ies and fur­ther pro­ced­ur­al devel­op­ment in oth­er areas. Amongst those items, includ­ing those iden­ti­fied as ​‘Not Imple­men­ted’ are areas of the busi­ness on which a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of pre­curs­or work has been under­taken even though the detail of the recom­mend­a­tion has not been addressed directly.

2. Item B1 in respect of pro­cure­ment pro­cesses is note as par­tially imple­men­ted and of high grade. A num­ber of high impact recom­mend­a­tions were made with­in the review car­ried out by the pre­vi­ous aud­it­ors, most of which have been imple­men­ted. The res­ult has been a sea change in the Authority’s approach to pro­cure­ment, with one remain­ing report­ing require­ment still to ful­fil. The grad­ing of the weak­ness ori­gin­ally iden­ti­fied has been retained, while the work remain­ing to be done is, on its own, per­haps not of such significance.

3. Officers will con­tin­ue to work towards com­ple­tion of the remain­ing out­stand­ing recommendations.

Louise Allen 02 March 2026 louiseallen@​cairngorms.​co.​uk