Internal audit AGAR report - matters of internal control 2024
Updated 8 July 2024
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2024
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/river-arun-internal-drainage-district-idd/internal-audit-agar-report-matters-of-internal-control-2024
The matters of internal control is attached to the AGAR Annual Internal Audit Report 2022 to 2023.
Control Objective F:
Petty cash payments were properly supported by receipts, all petty cash expenditure was approved and VAT appropriately accounted for.
Not covered by internal audit as no petty cash balances are held or administered by the IDB.
Control Objective G:
Salaries to employees and allowances to members were paid in accordance with the authority’s approvals, and PAYE and NI requirements were properly applied.
Not covered by internal audit as there are no specific employees working for the IDB. All work done for the IDB is performed by employees of the Environment Agency who work on other duties. Therefore no salaries were directly paid by the IDB.
Control Objective I:
Periodic and year-end bank account reconciliations were properly carried out during the year.
Not covered by internal audit as the administered River Arun IDB does not operate a separate bank account. It is therefore not possible to test a separate bank account reconciliation related specifically to the IDB (that is cash book to bank statement to general ledger). Transactions that involve real ‘cash’ transfers are conducted through the Environment Agency’s bank account which is reconciled every month by its Shared Services Centre (SSCL) provider. The transactions that are recorded on the IDB project codes represent the cash flows as if the IDB were a separate entity.
Control Objective K:
If the authority certified itself as exempt from a limited assurance review in 2021 to 2022, it met the exemption criteria and correctly declared itself exempt.
This control objective is not applicable as the River Arun IDB did not certify itself as exempt.
Control Objective N:
The authority has complied with the publication requirements for 2021 to 2022 AGAR.
Finding: the Arun IDB did not comply with the publication requirement for the 2021 to 2022 AGAR which required publication of the approved and signed annual governance statement and accountability return for 2021 to 2022 before 1 July 2022. The date of publication of both signed statements on GOV.UK was 19 July 2022.
Implication: this is a technical publication breach representing non-compliance with the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015.
Reason for non-compliance: the annual governance statement and accountability return in HTML format were uploaded on 30 June 2022. However these are not the signed versions. Hard copy signatures on the AGAR return were not able to be obtained until after 1 July due to the annual leave of a signatory.
Management action: a timetable has been produced which confirms upload of the signed statements to GOV.UK by the date required. Annual leave of the Responsible Financial Officer has been reviewed and we anticipate no delays to publication on GOV.UK in 2023.
Accountable Officer: Russell Long (River Arun IDB Clerk).
Date for action: 1 July 2023.