CIPFA North West Society - Audit Advisory Group

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Audit Risk & Governance Group

Introducing the Audit, Risk and Governance Group

The Audit Advisory Group has recently been renamed to the Audit, Risk and Governance Group.

Members of the Group, and the main contacts are listed on the Contacts page.

2012 Events Programme

To ensure the Group continues to add value to auditors and audit sections across the region, the events programme has been redesigned to provide two major events, supported by a series of low-cost, facilitated workshops to explore the risks and help to develop an approach to auditing some “difficult” areas.

Priced to simply cover the costs of hosting, the workshops aim to build on and share practitioners’ knowledge and experience, and identify best current practice. These events should be relevant to auditors of all levels.

Dates and venues of events will be posted asap, but enquiries and feedback are always welcome.

Events Programme 2012
Date(s)	Event & Venue
9 February 2012	Workshop 1: Commissioning, Contract Managment and Outsourced Services Venue: Warrington
21 March 2012	Contracts and Audit Planning Workshop Venue: Bolton Town Hall
23-25 March 2012	Annual Development and Training Event Venue: Marriott Hotel, Preston
1 May 2012	Workshop 1B: By Popular Demand, a re-run of Workshop 1: Commissioning, Contract Management and Outsourced Services Venue: Warrington Cost: £25 plus VAT
May 2012	Workshop 2: The Efficiency (Savings) Programme and VFM Projects Venue: TBA
June 2012	Workshop 3: Waste Disposal Venue: TBA
September 2012	Autumn Conference Venue: TBA
November 2012	Workshop 4: Transitional Arrangements for People Transferring from Children to Adult Services Venue: TBA

Annual Development & Training Event (March 2012)

The Group's Annual Development & Training Event was held at the Marriott Hotel Preston on Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th March. Details and presentation downloads are available on the Annual Development & Training Event page (formerly Weekend School).

Workshop 1: Commissioning, Contract Management and Outsourced Services (Feb 2012) - Venue Warrington

24 delegates attended the workshop, facilitated by Group members Jean Gleave and David Partington. The workshop provided an overview of commissioning and the commissioning process, followed by a presentation from Simon Kenton, Assistant Director of Integrated Commissioning, Warrington Health Consortium/ Warrington Borough Council who provided a practitioners insight into the audit issues relating to integrated NHS/local authority commissioning.

Delegates then worked together to agree an audit approach to the area, identifying the key risks along with some potential control mechanisms.

Autumn Seminar (September 2011)

The new Group's first event was the Audit, Risk & Governance Autumn Seminar held at the Woodlands Centre, Chorley on Friday, 30th September 2011. Details and presentation downloads are available on the Autumn Seminar page (formerly Summer Seminar).

Carbon Reduction Commitment Workshops (May 2011)

The Group recently provided three half day practical workshops on Carbon Reduction Committment (CRC) requirements with a particular emphasis on the areas to be considered when undertaking internal audits as required by the Environment Agency. The workshops were delivered by Lynn Anders, Knowsley Solutions and, judging by delegate comments and feedback proved to be very beneficial to the participants.

Forty nine delegates attended, 95% of whom rated the presentation style and content as very good or excellent and 97% also rated the usefulness and relevance of the workshops to themselves at a similar level.

Download a copy of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Workshop Presentation slides (pdf format, 673kb)

Comments from delegates included:-

"Very useful and comprehensive. Has given me confidence to tackle this area of work."
"Excellent presentation directly relevant to work to be undertaken."
"My first workshop - very good, informative and well directed. I feel much more confident about auditing CRC now".
"A potentially difficult area which was very well presented and comprehensively covered."

The aim of the Group is to provide further practical information and training sessions for auditors across the Region with the topic areas based on consultation with your organisations. Future workshops will be advertised on the website and by e-mail.

Contracts Audit Manual

In CIPFA's 2007 Cliff Nicholson Award for Innovation and Excellence in Audit, the Greater Manchester Contract Audit Group gained a "highly commended" award for their Contracts Audit Manual.

Download the Contracts Audit Manual in MS Word format (2.6Mb)

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