Strengthening audit

148  The Audit Commission has produced several audit diagnostic tools that address partnership risks. The toolkits comprise an eight-stage process that public bodies can use to review the corporate approach to partnership working and their management of specific partnerships (Figure 14).

149  The Audit Commission will help local public bodies to use this toolkit, which includes self-assessment tools and workshops and a specific module on partnership governance. It will work with audited and inspected bodies to support improvement in the light of new circumstances and needs that may arise, for example, from greater integration of planning and service delivery and from new policy initiatives such as local public service boards and LAAs, children's trusts, Integrated Governance in the NHS, pooled budgets and public interest companies.

150  The Audit Commission's Code of Audit Practice 2005 (Ref. 21) explicitly addresses the need for auditors to follow the public pound into partnerships. Where appropriate, the Commission will consider specifying audit work across a partnership in a local area in order to undertake a collective assessment of how partners are engaging with each other, how they are managing risks and how well their corporate governance arrangements support the governance of the partnerships in which they engage.

'[Auditors should] have regard to the fact that local government bodies operate and deliver their services in a range of partnerships and other forms of joint working or contracts with other public sector, voluntary or private sector bodies. Auditors should therefore consider whether they need to follow public money into and across such arrangements.'

'[The audited body's] corporate performance management and financial management arrangements form a key part of the system of internal control and comprise the arrangements for …[inter alia] identifying, evaluating and managing operational and financial risks and opportunities, including those arising from involvement in partnerships and joint working.'
Audit Commission: Code of Audit Practice 2005 for local government bodies