Agenda item

This report details the work undertaken by the in-house resources in the Audit and Risk team and communicates a first update on completion of the work plan for 2023/24.

Ms Vanessa Bateman, Deputy Head of Audit and Risk Management, introduced the report.

The meeting heard that:

·      In terms of the sanctions that had been issued and accepted by the people misusing the blue badge scheme, there was around £3,000 income that had arrived into to the budget.

·      It was important to maintain a certain level of anti-fraud awareness and anti-fraud processes across most of the Council’s operations and blue badges had not been examined for a while so there was a little more emphasis in this area currently. Hopefully in the next two or three months, the Council would move to a place where most of that work would be taken up by the service. 

·      The Council had a fraud reporting email address and a phone number. Earlier in the year, there was a national fraud campaign and some work had been done with the team to promote this. Residents did often report issues of suspected fraud which occupied the team to gather intelligence and form a view of a particular issue.  Efforts were made to publicise public participation including a written note in the members newsletter and councillors could use the members inquiries avenue available to them.  The team were much more efficient at dealing with queries if they were raised through the standard channels. Whistleblowing in Haringey had been very high in the past and this had settled in recent times. Whistleblowing was also commonly reported to HR and efforts were made to keep a general perspective of all of it. Some of what was submitted to HR could be classified as grievance as well as whistleblowing. The team did well to reassure people about remaining anonymous and investigations were completed without any indication of where the initial intelligence had primarily arrived. There was a slightly higher percentage of frivolous or malicious whistleblowing than expected.

·      There had been whistleblowing about third party organisations where the Council commissioned resources. This was always positive as sometimes those establishments were harder to reach.

·      The technology in the blue badge area had improved helping the Council do its job. There was much more information to the operatives in the borough about the badges that were cancelled or stolen. A blue badge did not always link to a specific vehicle, it was linked to the person but the technology regarding whether or not the badge used was valid was strong and reliable. Although there was theft around blue badges, the Council had a lot of communication from the Police where there were reports of fraud and selling of the badges. The team wanted to focus their efforts on this sort of disruption in the borough. The financial sanctions were now over and above a PCA and there appeared to be deterrence from the fraud. 

·      Systems, data and accurate audit trails would significantly help the Council. One of the challenges the Council had was its teams using different systems so officers would spend time going through various systems to carry out analysis. In some of the residential areas, it was difficult to carry out the work without finding someone to help the team. The team always completed the work with good results, but the time it took was something that could be improved upon and a centralised system would help the team attain faster results.

RESOLVED

To note the activities of the team during quarter two of 2023/24.