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

1 Introduction

1.1 This is the second year that the County Council has been required under the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2003 to produce a broad-based Statement of Internal Control. The Statement needs to be approved by the County Council before the end of June 2006 and then formal `signed off' by the Leader of the County Council and the Chief Executive.

1.2 The Statement of Internal Control provides a review of the effectiveness of the County Council's internal control systems and is also intended to give an assurance about how effectively they operate in practice. The Statement is also now an integral part of the Corporate Governance regime and also an important part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment framework.

1.3 As with last year's Statement the opportunity has been taken to make some improvements to the information contained. One notable addition has been a section on areas for improvement at the end of the Statement and which will be worked on in order to achieve improvement over the next 12 months. As with last year's Statement there are direct comments from senior managers responsible for significant corporate functions such as procurement, health and safety and risk management.

1.4 The conclusions reached in the Statement of Internal Control are developed in close co-operation with the Chief Internal Auditor. In the summer of 2005 a comprehensive corporate and departmental governance questionnaire was issued by the Monitoring Officer to relevant officers. It is fair to say that the Chief Internal Auditor and his team have played an important part in validating responses to both of these questionnaires and identifying issues where follow-up action is necessary. The intention is to continually albeit incrementally, improve the current process. On a more detailed level the Committee also needs to consider the Statement of Internal Control in the context of the Annual Internal Audit Opinion 2005/06 also contained on the agenda for this meeting.

2 Draft Statement of Internal Control

2.1 A draft Statement of Internal Control is attached as an appendix. This broadly follows the CIPFA Guidance in terms of content. As a draft members now have the opportunity to comment upon it 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 of the County Council and the 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 the 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.

N.B. The list excludes:

1. Published works.


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

TITLE FILE

None.