Consumer Scotland
Audit and Risk Committee Meeting
10 December 2024
Minute of Meeting
Present:
Nick Martin – Chair
James Walker – Member
Angela Morgan – Member
Lesley Halliday – Member
In attendance:
Sam Ghibaldan – Chief Executive
Sue Bomphray – Director of Operations
Douglas White – Director of Policy and Advocacy
David Eiser – Director of Research and Analysis
Louise Carmichael – Senior Internal Audit Manager, Scottish Government
Glen Bissett – Internal Audit Manager, Scottish Government
Liam McHugh – Assistant Manager, Deloitte LLP
Sally Sandground – Finance, Governance and Corporate Services Manager
Ifthakhar Eresh – Finance, Governance and Corporate Services Officer (minutes)
Apologies:
David Wilson – Chair, Consumer Scotland Board
Mo Ramzan – External Audit Partner, Deloitte LLP
Agenda Item 1 – Welcome and Declarations of Interest.
1. The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and noted apologies from the Chair of the Consumer Scotland Board and the External Audit Partner.
2. There were no declarations of interest noted.
Agenda Item 2.1 – Minutes of Previous Meeting
3. The minutes of the previous meeting on 24 September 2024 were approved by the Committee.
Agenda Item 2.2 – Action Tracker
4. The Action Tracker had no actions outstanding.
Agenda Item 3 – Director of Operations Update
The Director of Operations gave a brief update on the Oracle Fusion implementation, the Medium Term Financial Strategy and on the forecast outturn. The Director of Operations responded to questions on her report. The Chair requested more detail on how the Saint Vincent Plaza licence agreement worked in practice and annual costs.
Action – Director of Operations to share a summary of how the SVP licence agreement operates.
Agenda Item 4 – Risk
5. The Director of Operations gave an update on the Strategic Risk Register and the Committee discussed the points raised in the report as well as looking at each risk in more detail; this included changes that have been made to reflect ongoing dialogue around controls, actions and scoring.
6. The Risk Management Framework and Policy was presented for annual review. Minor changes were proposed by the Committee.
Action – Risk Management Policy - changes to be made per discussion.
Agenda Item 5 – Management Accounts 2024-25
7. The Finance, Governance and Corporate Services Manager provided an update on the Financial Report 2024-25. Management Accounts compare our accounts against our budget. The report is based on these figures and takes consideration of the first half spend relating to the financial year 2024-25 which was managed via SEAS. The reports from Q3 onwards will be extracted from Oracle.
8. The distributed report enables comparison of forecast outturn to prior year and budget, and aligns with the expectation that management accounts and forecast outturn will continue to be provided to the ARC on a quarterly basis. The Chair requested more granularity in the future on reporting and underspend.
Action – a new format to be agreed for Management Accounts when Oracle reporting available to include more granularity on reporting and underspend.
Agenda Item 6 – Draft Budget – FY2025-26
9. The Director of Operations gave a verbal update on the Draft Budget for FY2025-26. The proposed budget of £4.11M is in line with our revised ask and allows for inflation and pay increases
10. The Director of Operations assured the Committee that the escalation process followed this year with Scottish Government has been much smoother and has resulted in a more satisfactory budget position than initially proposed.
11. The budget is due to be ratified by the Parliament in late February and the Director of Operations will present the final budget by category at the March meeting. Work will now progress on refreshing the Medium Term Financial Strategy.
Action – Chair to provide good practice examples on Medium Term Financial Strategy.
Agenda Item 7 – Annual Review of ARC effectiveness
12. The Chair gave brief verbal presentation regarding the effectiveness of ARC paper, and indicated he will circulate a questionnaire to all the members for completion.
Action – Chair to circulate ARC effectiveness questionnaire to members.
Agenda Item 8 – External Audit
13. The Assistant Manager from external audit Deloitte LLP presented the External Audit plan. The Audit Manager from External Audit had confirmed final audit plan to the Committee. There were no issues raised and the Committee noted the plan for the external audit.
Agenda Item 9 – Internal Audit – Audit Progress report
14. The Senior Internal Audit Manager highlighted some of the wider directorate updates.
15. The Internal Audit Manager provided an update on the Internal Audit Progress Report focusing on Financial Control and Procurement, Cyber Resilience, Governance and Risk Management with ongoing fieldwork. The Committee acknowledged all the work being carried out and was assured there were no significant issues to report.
Action – Aggregated Audit Action tracker - completed items to be hidden and numbering to be revised.
Agenda Item 10 - AOB
16. No other business was raised.
17. The Chair thanked everyone for their participation and expressed his thanks for all the progress that had been made, then closed the meeting.
18. The date of the next meeting is Tuesday 11 March 2025 at 10:00 hrs online via Teams.