Contact: Jeff Pattison, ext 7321, email [email protected] or Ejner Knudsen, ext 7403, email [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 This report incorporates a draft Statement of Internal Control which is required to be submitted and approved by the Governance Committee under the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2003 before the end of June 2007.

2 Recommendation

2.1 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 amendments that the Committee may wish to make.

3 Background

3.1 The County Council is 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 Governance Committee on behalf of the County Council before the end of June 2007. It then needs to be formally "signed off" by the Leader of the County Council and the Chief Executive.

3.2 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.

3.3 The format and particularly the content of the draft Statement of Internal Control has been modified, and suggestions for improvement made by the Audit Commission have also been taken into account and the Statement amended accordingly. One suggestion was to describe the methodology which is undertaken in order to arrive at the Statement of Internal Control. As members will already appreciate from discussions of the Statement of Control in earlier years, this is based on a detailed questionnaire which is sent out every two years to all chief officers and to those others who undertake an essential corporate role within the organisation. Over the following two years all responses to the questionnaires are then reviewed during the course of the work undertaken by the Internal Audit Section of the County Treasurer's Department. What then follows is a formal audit report on those reviews and the information contained within them is then used to assist in the formulation of the draft Statement of Internal Control. The last questionnaire was sent out in 2005 and therefore a revised version will be issued during the summer of 2007. This revised questionnaire, as with previous iterations, will be drafted in close co-operation with the Internal Audit Section.

3.4 A copy of the emerging Draft Statement of Internal Control has previously been sent to all members of the Governance Committee for any observations or comments that they wish to make, and any such comments have been taken into account in drafting the version of the Statement of Internal Control currently before the Committee.

3.5 Finally, members should note that this may be the last year that a Statement of Internal Control is required. CIPFA are in the process of consulting on a revised format which will require the preparation and publication of an annual governance statement in lieu of a Statement of Internal Control.

4 Draft Statement of Internal Control

4.1 A Draft Statement of Internal Control is attached as an Appendix to this report. This broadly follows the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (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.

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:

Draft Statement of Internal Control