Paul Harrington, Chief Auditor, submitted a reporton the findings emanating from the audit report in respect of Additional Payments.  Additional payments covered a range of areas including acting up allowances, honoraria for undertaking a discrete project or piece of work over and above normal duties, overtime and market supplements.  The Council had spent approximately £2.287m on additional payments, excluding overtime, in 2017/18.  In addition, around £1.6m had been paid in both 2016/17 and 2017/18 in overtime.  The aim of the audit had been to review the systems and processes which govern honoraria and additional payments, including checking that they were consistently applied, robust, appropriate and complied with HR policies.  Although HR policies were largely in place for the various types of additional payments such as acting up allowances, honoraria and market supplements, most of these policies had not been updated recently.  However, the ‘limited assurance’ had not been derived from a lack of HR rules and procedures, but from a lack of adherence to them.  The full internal audit report was attached to the report as an appendix, which included five recommendations to address the risks that had been identified.

Resolved –

(1)            That the review of employment policies, which would ultimately be presented to the Personnel Committee for approval, which was being carried out by the Head of HR & Organisational Development be noted and endorsed;

(2)            That the Chief Auditor’s recommendations set out in the internal audit report be endorsed and the Management responses to those recommendations be noted;

(3)            That a further report on the progress made to address the risks set out in the Internal Audit report be submitted to the Committee’s meeting on 16 April 2018.

(Exempt information as specified in paragraph 3)