The Head of Commissioning and Business Improvement introduced her report setting out details of progress on the planned improvements to contract management across the Council following an Internal Audit review completed in November 2018.  It was noted that:

·  Contract management received a Weak level of assurance from an Internal Audit review in November 2018.  The Internal Audit report concluded that, whilst there was clearly good practice in the management of the leisure and culture contracts, improvement in contract management was required corporately. 

·  An update on contract management was presented to the Committee in March 2019.  Good progress had been made in the six months since that last report.  All but one of the recommendations from the Internal Audit review had been fully addressed and significant progress had been made on the one outstanding recommendation.  The Internal Audit team had now reassessed the assurance rating for contract management to Sound.

In response to a question about the Internal Audit assurance rating and whether there was scope for further improvement, the Head of Audit Partnership explained that there were four assurance ratings: Poor, Weak (adverse ratings), Sound and Strong.  Sound was a level that the Council should be satisfied with, but contract management, like all areas of the Council’s business, remained in the Audit Universe and would be revisited periodically at which point it might receive a Strong assurance rating.  For the purpose of correcting deficiencies, the aim was to achieve a positive assurance level and allow the Service to move on from there.

RESOLVED:  That progress to improve contract management corporately be noted.