Internal Audit and Assurance
With over 20 dedicated internal audit and assurance specialists, and experience spanning the NHS, central and local government, public-private partnerships, housing and education, Audit North can provide a variety of services tailored to your needs and budget:
Internal Audit Delivery: Our team members have years of experience in delivering internal audit programmes, whether large or small, in a variety of settings. We can deliver your internal audit plan in full, or supplement your in-house delivery through provision of specialist knowledge or additional resources when needed to ensure you meet targets.
Internal Audit Planning and Strategy: Our Assistant Directors and Managers have held senior internal audit roles in NHS, local and central government, including reviewing and helping to improve the effectiveness of internal audit teams. We are familiar with a variety of best practice approaches to developing internal audit strategy and plans and, in challenging times, can help you satisfy your Audit Committee that you are covering the right areas efficiently. We work alongside client teams helping to ensure skills and knowledge transfer
Internal Audit Process and Methods: We can also apply the experience noted above to help develop and strengthen internal audit processes and methods, from training in risk-based auditing through to helping you plan and implement innovative, automated testing techniques.
Internal Audit Training: We can tailor our in-house training programmes to assist internal audit teams in training new staff, or staff progressing to the next level. Training is delivered by staff with years of experience in both first hand delivery of internal audit services and in training internal auditors.
Assurance mapping: Assurance mapping involves identifying the assurances which the Board needs to receive in respect of significant business risks, and to support the assurances which they provide externally, and identifying how and by whom such assurances are provided. Our approach involves a number of steps, from facilitating the development of an assurance map, through to critically assessing the depth, frequency, scope and quality of assurances relied on. This helps to ensure that: the Board can rely on the assurances provided; assurance is provided sufficiently often and at the right time and that duplication of effort is minimised. In this way, we help our clients to strengthen their assurance processes over time and, by working alongside management, we improve their knowledge and understanding of assurance.
Specialist auditing: the breadth of skills and experience within our team enables us to offer a range of specialist audit services either as discrete assignments or in support of in-house teams. Examples include: capital/ contract auditing, helping to assure large spending programmes and, potentially, identify cost savings; data interrogation testing, focused on identifying patterns in large volumes of data and outsourcing risk, helping to protect services and reputation. In the latter case, we draw upon our team members experience in providing assurance over one of the largest outsourcing contracts in the public sector.
Data quality / validation: Non-financial performance data continues to grow in importance throughout the public sector. We have years of implementing innovative approaches to assessing processes for capturing, validating and reporting data, helping you to report complete and reliable data to your stakeholders. In addition, we are able to draw on several years experience of working with leading practitioners in data quality and reporting within our current client base.
Process and controls mapping: We have developed systematic approaches to documenting processes, to support control self-assessment or to help design controls into new systems. We work with management to develop and validate the process maps, which are then handed over to you to form part of your in-house control manual and provide a basis for periodic reassessment of controls. Our methodology goes much further than simply capturing process steps and controls: it identifies dependencies across systems, assurance received in respect of controls and efficiency opportunities. See Whats New for more information.
In line with the Audit North vision, all of the above services can be accessed at our not-for-profit rates. To find out more, please contact one of our senior internal audit staff:
Warren Edge (0191 441 5919)
warren.edge@nhs.net
Stuart Fallowfield (01642 352292)
Joanne Bryson (0191 441 5941)
Lee Dobbing (01642 354675)