Templemore, Ilex audits not finished

Full account probes of Templemore Sports Complex, the transfer of Ilex’s functions to the Council, and the local authority’s planning section, among other areas, were not finished.

James Harrigan, DC&SDC’s Internal Audit Manager, made the revelations when presenting his Annual Audit Opinion for 2018/19 to the June meeting of of the Council Assurance, Audit and Risk Committee.

The committee were told that: “The Audit Plan was not completed in full for 2018/2019. However, despite this fact the Internal Audit Manager is satisfied that a significant amount of assurance work was carried out and the associated audit reports were provided to the Committee on high risk areas facing the organisation.”

The audit plan itself notes: “The planned audit work on the Templemore Sports Complex is currently ongoing and will be finalised as soon as possible. Audits of Planning, the audit of the project of the transfer of Ilex Strategy and Regeneration function to DCSDC (Year 2), the North West Development Group (NWDG), Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Events were not started during 18/19.”

Mr. Harrigan explained that this had been “due to the amount of additional work carried out by the Internal Audit team during 2018/19, which was not identified in the audit plan at the start of the year”.

This, he said, had had “a knock on impact on the completion of the planned audit work”.

UUP Alderman Derek Hussey remarked: “There are areas not yet started. I look at planning, a major area for this Council, I look at ICT. There are issues.”