Issue - meetings

(i)             to note that officers would try to link Assurance Reporting Indicators to RAG status in future reports; and

(ii)            to note the information in relation to improvements implemented contained within the report and appendices.

With reference to article 14 of the minute of its meeting of 28 November 2024, the Committee had before it a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services which presented an update on improvements implemented in relation to Procurement Compliance, following the previous Internal Audit report on the matter.

The report recommended –

that the Committee note the information in relation to improvements implemented contained within the report and appendices.

In response to a question as to the next steps and whether there would be a further report back, the Chief Internal Auditor advised that no further action was required, however there were always procurement reviews in each audit plan, and so there would be updates on processes at that point.

In response to a question on the Assurance Reporting Indicators on page 58 of the report and the fact that assessments would be graded as high, medium or low where red, amber, green (RAG) was used in other Council reports, the Strategic Commercial Manager advised that the high, medium and low assessments did equate to the RAG status, and as the procurement service was shared across partners, reporting also had to fit with requirements of other organisations, however she would look at linking these to RAG status in future.

In response to a question relating to the arrangements made to calculate the key indicators, how much work this would entail and whether this would be distributed across clusters, the Strategic Commercial Manager advised that a template had been devised to collate data to be entered into PowerBI, but that at this stage it was not clear how many hours this would take.  While Procurement would collate the information, there would be collaboration with other clusters through reporting to the Risk Board and engaging with services in terms of improvement actions, as well as with colleagues in Internal Audit.

Finally in response to a question on the delegated procurement authority training undertaken by Chief Officers, the Strategic Commercial Manager advised that Chief Officers had been required to undertake this training and had oversight of a number of delegated procurers within their cluster.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)       to note that officers would try to link Assurance Reporting Indicators to RAG status in future reports; and

(ii)       to otherwise note the report.