Internal Audit: Starts again once the External Audit is complete

AUTHOR: ELEANOR GREENE, SECRETARY TO THE PARISH INTERNAL AUDITORS FORUM

Summer holidays are coming close, and the external auditors are getting through even the most complicated AGAR forms.

Internal auditors are planning their calendars for the 2021/22 season.

Clerks are getting set up for the start of budget setting and face-to-face meetings.

And in the middle of all that, an essential consultation about the future of Local Government audit lands in the email.

Please can we get as many Parish Internal Auditors to fill this out so that our tier of Local Government has a voice?

The Internal Audit forum will be having its autumn meeting in mid-September – please get in touch with Tim Light if you are an IA who is not yet involved but would like to be.

The consultation questions about how the AGAR should be laid out, and the compulsory supporting documents will be hot topics of conversation.

The IAF is also the only place where the queries from AGAR submissions up and down the land can be discussed and reviewed to reduce queries in future years.

Last year our group rewrote Section 4 of Governance and Accountability knowing that more work would be needed in the coming years.

Some of the audit queries from this year have shown that we were right. Input from the whole country will help us to help you to get clear guidance.

This winter, we will contact JPAG to support further improvements in internal audits for all parish councils, hopefully bringing improvements to Section 5.

If you are an Internal Auditor, please join us.

To find out more about the Parish Internal Auditor Forum, please email  or .

And we have still not found the collective noun for Parish Internal auditors.