PrintThe Cliff Nicholson Award for Innovation and Excellence in Public Service Audit 2010
CIPFA Annual Audit Conference, Manchester, 18-19 May 2010
Roger Latham, CIPFA President, and Tim Crowley, Audit Panel Vice-Chairman, welcomed delegates to the Renaissance Hotel in Manchester for the formal conference dinner and presentation of the Cliff Nicholson Award for Innovation and Excellence in Public Service Audit.
Unfortunately, Cliff Nicholson himself could not be present and so the honour of presenting these awards was passed to Roger Latham. Roger paid tribute to Cliff’s sterling work over the years within the audit profession and praised his efforts and professionalism in remaining an active part of the judging committee for this prestigious annual award.
Roger went on to add that:
“Cliff had a distinguished career in public service for over 40 years, most of that time in local government audit, which was recognised in 1986 with the award of a CBE and in 1990 by the presidency of CIPFA. On leaving the presidency, Cliff kindly donated this magnificent trophy to encourage the development of the audit profession”
Roger thanked CIPFA’s Audit Panel as well as Marc Teiman who ably project managed the award from start to finish. The presentation itself was preceded by Roger praising the amount of excellent entries received from across a range of public sector organsiations this year making this a very difficult competition to judge.
Roger then went on to announce the winners of the awards. The highly commended entry this year was:
- Midlothian Council for their work on ‘Improving Assurance’
Roger presented Gerald Tait from Midlothian Council with the highly commended certificate accepted on behalf of and the audit team at Midlothian and praised their excellent and innovative piece of audit work
Roger then went on to announce this year’s winner and invited John Burrows from North Yorkshire County Council and Max Thomas from Veritau Limited to come and collect the trophy and certificates on behalf of the joint partnership effort involving the City of York Council, North Yorkshire County Council and Veritau Limited. Roger praised the work not only from John Burrows and Max Thomas but also Pauline Stuchfield their colleague at York City Council who could not be at the dinner and presentation.
CYC/NYCC/Veritau submitted an entry on.’Effecting significant change by adopting an innovative approach to future service provision for internal audit’
John Burrows and Max Thomas from North Yorkshire County Council and Veritau Limited receive the magnificent crystal bowl as winners of the 2010 Cliff Nicholson Award from CIPFA President Roger Latham
John Burrows and Max Thomas from North Yorkshire County Council and Veritau Limited proudly show their winning certificates
In addition to the presentations shown on this page CIPFA were delighted to issue a press release praising the work of CYC/NYCC and Veritau Limited.
http://www.cipfa.org.uk/press/press_releases.cfm
PRESENTATIONS AND COMMENTS FROM THE 2010 AWARD WINNERS
Max Thomas, Director and Head of Internal Audit, Veritau Ltd:
“North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York Council are honoured to receive the 2010 CIPFA Cliff Nicholson Award for Innovation and Excellence in Audit.
There is currently a lot of interest in whether the sharing of services can offer a possible solution to the funding pressures faced by public sector organisations. Veritau is a good example of how two local authorities can work together to develop such a shared service. The creation of a company wholly owned by the two Councils as the vehicle for delivering audit services in the future was the culmination of over 18 months work. The company represents an innovative solution based on an equal partnership between the two Councils. However, the project would not have been possible without the hard work, trust and commitment shown by managers and staff in both Councils.
Veritau has been operating since 1 April 2009. Since that date the new combined service has offered increased audit resilience and capacity to the two Councils. The company has also been able to drive out efficiencies by reducing unnecessary duplication and through the introduction of improved working methods based on best practice. Both customer and staff satisfaction have improved since the company became operational.
Already a number of other local authorities have expressed an interest in seeing whether the approach adopted by NYCC and CYC can be used as the model for delivering shared audit services in their areas.”
Gerald Tait, Risk and Audit Manager, Midlothian Council
“In Midlothian Council we are continually striving to provide quality services to the public and in doing so acknowledge that this can only be achieved with a solid and robust internal control environment. Internal Audit’s assurance work is greatly assisting the improvement in Midlothian’s internal control systems and management of risk and it is extremely gratifying that this work has been recognised by fellow professionals within CIPFA.
The Midlothian Internal Audit service merged in 2008 with the risk management facilitation and coordination role within the Council. The posts of Audit Manager and Risk Manager were merged into the post of Risk and Audit Manager so that both angles to the risk scene could be more fully integrated as well as achieving an efficiency saving. The service is responsible for:-
- all internal audit assurance work, focusing mainly on core financial systems and high risk exposures identified through risk assessment;
- the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) policy of the Council – development of policy, risk management structures and framework, risk management computer system, facilitation and coordination of risk management;
- Coordination of the National Fraud Initiative; and
- Coordination of the annual assessment of corporate governance.
CYC/NYCC and Veritau Limited
2010 Award Winner
PRESENTATION
Midlothian Council
Highly Commended Entry
PRESENTATION
For further information on the work of the two award winners please contact:
| John Burrows North Yorkshire CC John.Burrows@northyorks.gov.uk |
Pauline Stuchfield City of York Council pauline.stuchfield@york.gov.uk |
| Max Thomas Veritau Ltd Max.Thomas@veritau.co.uk |
Gerald Tait Midlothian Council Gerald.tait@midlothian.gov.uk |
If you would like to find out more about the award then please contact Marc Teiman on telephone: 020 7543 5680 or email: marc.teiman@cipfa.org.uk
If you would like to find out more about the CIPFA annual audit conference please contact Claire Howard on telephone: 020 7543 5628 or email: claire.howard@cipfa.org.uk