Contact: Jeff Pattison, tel 01962 847321 [email protected] and Ejner Knudsen, tel 01962 847403 [email protected]

1 Introduction

1.1 Last year was the first that a broad based Statement of Internal Control was required to be produced and `signed off' by the Leader of the County Council and the Chief Executive. This is the result of a requirement contained within the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2003.

1.2 The emphasis on Corporate Governance of which the Statement of Internal Control is a part, is increasing and is now firmly embedded into the Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime. The Statement of Internal Control represents a review of the effectiveness of the County Council's internal control and risk management systems and is also intended to give an assurance about how effectively they operate in practice.

1.3 The opportunity has been taken this year to improve on the content of the Statement of Internal Control and ensure that guidance issued by Cipfa earlier in the year has been taken into account. As a consequence several additional areas of assurance have been included with an expanded explanation, including direct comments from senior managers responsible for significant corporate functions. As a result, this year's Statement is somewhat longer, but hopefully, also more informative.

1.4 The conclusions reached in the Statement of Internal Control also rely upon the essential work undertaken by the Chief Internal Auditor and his team on an ongoing basis. One particularly relevant role that they have been carrying out since 2003 is to validate responses to both corporate and departmental governance questionnaires issued by the Monitoring Officer in 2003. The results of this and other internal audit reviews can be seen in the County Treasurer's Annual Internal Audit Opinion 2004/05 which is elsewhere on the agenda for this meeting and not therefore repeated within this report. Revised questionnaires and internal audit follow-up will again take place this year. As previously, any shortcomings which are identified from this process will be corrected.

2 Draft Statement of Internal Control

2.1 A draft Statement is attached as an Appendix. This broadly follows the Cipfa guidance in terms of content and as mentioned above is both longer and more detailed than the Statement issued last year. As a draft, members now have the opportunity to comment on the content and indicate whether or not they would wish to see any amendments made to it.

3 Recommendation

That the Committee approves the draft Statement of Internal Control for signature by the Leader and Chief Executive, subject to any further amendments that the Committee may wish to make.

Section 100D - Local Government Act 1972 - Background Papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB the list excludes:

1. Published Works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

None.