SUMMARY OF AUDIT AND RISK COMMITTEE HELD ON 17 NOVEMBER 2014
Held at: St Paul's Way Centre, 83 St Paul's Way, London E3 4AJ, at 6.30 p.m.
Board members present: John Norman (Chair), Colin Campbell (Co-optee),
Elizabeth Marshall, Matthew Rowe, Simon Turek
Internal Audit
We approved the Audit Charter and prepared by internal auditors, Baker Tilly.
We agreed an action plan for audit work for the coming year. We received
reports from Baker Tilly on PH’s risk management and our fraud resilience. We
agreed to capture our approach to risk in a strategy which will be presented at the
next meeting. We were pleased to hear that Baker Tilly believes that PH is
reasonably resilient to fraud and we agreed to take steps to increase our
resilience.
We approved a new anti fraud and bribery policy and agreed how this should be
promoted to staff and other stakeholders.
Probity Policy
We carried out the annual review of the Probity Policy and asked that staff be
reminded of the requirements of the policy.
Risk Management
The Committee reviewed Poplar HARCA’s risk map paying particular attention to
the risks that had changed since the last review.
Health and Safety
PH’s Health and Safety Manager attended the meeting and reported that PH has
a strong H&S system in place. This was confirmed by the internal auditors (TIAA)
when they audited health and safety last year. We heard that an external audit by
the British Safety Council is planned that will be useful to identify any gaps.
The Chair reported on a recent review of PH’s offices that he had conducted with
the H & S Manager and the Facilities Manager. We agreed that offices are
currently somewhat crowded and untidy but do not constitute a H & S risk. We
noted that there is a plan in place to address this.
Other Matters
We also received reports on PH’s compliance with the regulator’s standards, new
accounting requirements and how we obtain assurance on the Committee’s
Terms of Reference.
John Norman
Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee
Making Poplar a better place to live
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