CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 3 06/09/19

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: INTERN­AL AUDIT ANNU­AL REPORT ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉

Pre­pared by: CLAIRE ROBERTSON, BDO

TONY BAR­RIE, BDO

Pur­pose

To present the intern­al auditor’s Annu­al Intern­al Audit Report for ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Con­sider the intern­al auditor’s annu­al report cov­er­ing their work in ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉; b) Note the intern­al auditor’s annu­al State­ment of Assur­ance is set out on page 8 of their report; c) Con­sider wheth­er the report raises any issues pri­or to the review of the final accounts doc­u­ment for ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ and the Gov­ernance State­ment included in the accounts document.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. The Head of Intern­al Audit is required to provide an annu­al opin­ion on the over­all adequacy and effect­ive­ness of the Authority’s sys­tem of intern­al con­trol. The Authority’s intern­al audit func­tion is car­ried out by BDO LLP.
2. The full Annu­al Intern­al Audit report is set out as Annex I to this paper.
3. Six audits were car­ried out dur­ing the year with a total of 13 recom­mend­a­tions made – 1 high, 6 medi­um level and 6 Low level. Addi­tion­ally, a fol­low up report was under­taken on recom­mend­a­tions made from 2017 – 18 and pri­or years. Out of 43 recom­mend­a­tions fol­lowed up 17 were fully imple­men­ted, 7 par­tially imple­men­ted, 7 were not yet imple­men­ted, 1 super­seded and 11 recom­mend­a­tions were not yet due for imple­ment­a­tion by the time of the fol­low up. All non-imple­men­ted recom­mend­a­tions have been flagged for imple­ment­a­tion by 31 Decem­ber 2019 or before.
4. The over­all intern­al audit opin­ion for the peri­od 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 is that risk man­age­ment activ­it­ies and con­trol in the areas examined were (1) found to be suit­ably designed to achieve the spe­cif­ic risk man­age­ment, con­trol and gov­ernance arrange­ments, with the excep­tion of the busi­ness con­tinu­ity plan where fur­ther work is required, and (2) were oper­ated with suf­fi­cient effect­ive­ness to provide reas­on­able, but not abso­lute assur­ance that the related risk man­age­ment, con­trol and gov­ernance were achieved for the year, in all areas except busi­ness continuity.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 3 06/09/19

Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Manager

28 August 2019

danielralph@​cairngorms.​co.​uk