Local Authority Internal Audit Virtual Forum
31 January 2024
Please note:
- All Institute responses are boxed and highlighted blue
- Where the chair comments in that capacity this box is highlighted in yellow
- For confidentiality, the identities of all delegates/attendees are anonymised
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Institute welcome | Anne Kiem, CEO, Chartered IIA UK and Ireland Thank you for joining us today for our first Local Authority Internal Audit Forum for 2024. 2024 will see us beginning to make a number of changes to the services we offer our members and any non- members who may be interested in joining us. While this forum will continue to run monthly on a Wednesday at 3:30pm we are going to make some enhancements with the objective of increasing the relevance of the topics we discuss and the support we provide to this sector of our membership. This session will discuss our proposals and how we wish to increase engagement with your sector. We will also discuss a potential call to action for the Institute. More on both in a minute but for now, I would like to provide the normal introductory comments: I am joined today by:
Before I hand over to our Chair may I remind you of the protocols for the Forum namely:
The session is being recorded. This is purely for the purposes of allowing us to prepare notes of the discussion for cascading to members. We are adopting the ‘Chatham House rule’ today - the notes will not identify any contributor by name other than those from the Institute and the speakers here today, the recording itself will be deleted within 24 hours as soon as we have completed writing up the notes. |
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Chair opening comments | Piyush Fatania, Head of Audit, Risk, Assurance and Insurance at Gloucestershire County Council and Chartered IIA Council member I’m delighted that the Institute now engages with the Public Sector, it listened and is increasing it’s engagement with local government. There isn’t a magic bullet for the issues we are facing. But together, with our collective knowledge and experience we can collaborate to benefit our profession and our day to day working as internal auditors. |
Message from Derek Jamieson, Head of Member Services
Today's forum focussed on two topics:
- The future shape of the forum
We will continue to run the forum on a monthly basis and on a Wednesday at 3:30pm. We will also continue aim to set dates several months in advance.
We have been in discussions with the Local Authority Chief Auditor Network (LACAN) with a view to developing closer relationships. Going forward, we will seek their thought process on potential agenda items and through doing so we aim to further increase the relevance of our agendas in 2024.
- Internal Audit services in Local Authorities and Councils
The Institute has reflected on many recent discussions regarding the challenges facing the provision of internal audit services in Local Authorities and Councils. These discussions have delivered consistent messages focussing on a number of key concerns.
Today we sought to:
- Test and expand our understanding of these challenges and a considerable amount of information was shared which gave all attendees a better understanding of some of the issues across the community.
- Identify whether there is broad support for the Institute commencing an initiative to draw out these issues formally on behalf of our members. This was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of participants.
We will now move to mobilise an internal project and have asked for volunteers who would be willing to support the shaping and focus on our work.
Updates on the progress of our work will be provided at future meeting of the forum.
Please email Paola.Petritoli@iia.org.uk if you would like to get involved in some way to support our report/survey.
