Audit Quality Report 2024

Our people

Having the right staff with sufficient time to undertake audit work is critical to achieving audit quality. It is equally essential that those staff adopt a questioning and sceptical approach and accept personal responsibility for the quality of their own work.

We operate well-defined recruitment processes to ensure that all our staff have the necessary competence and capabilities to carry out their work. For audit of accounts work we have established professional entry routes with new applicants joining as either AAT apprentices or ICAEW trainees. For performance audit work, our recruitment process includes a structured assessment of the candidate’s skills and experience.

In July 2024, we finalised a new Strategic Workforce Plan covering July 2024 to June 2027. Against a wide range of external and internal challenges, the Plan identifies Audit Wales’ workforce priorities for the next three years to support high quality audit work. In the first year, the Plan will focus on the following priorities:

• Talent management and succession planning
• Skills development
• Backlog in delivery – recruitment, retention, increasing capacity
• Organisation design, roles and resourcing

For all accounts audit work, we assign responsibility to an engagement lead who is responsible for the overall direction of that work and for ensuring that the audit team has the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to undertake the work. The engagement lead is also responsible for ensuring that audit team members receive the right supervision and support to undertake their work. In performance audit, these responsibilities are usually carried out by the person assigned the role of second reviewer, a director or manager.

There will be occasions where aspects of our work involve highly specialist areas. In these instances, we engage with suitably qualified external experts to provide additional support for our work. In accounts audit work, this includes the review of pension actuarial assumptions and of property valuations.

In performance audit work, we frequently engage with specialists and organisations with relevant expertise to inform our work, including our audit criteria. For example, as part of our work on income diversification for National Park Authorities in Wales we engaged with officers from other National Park Authorities in the United Kingdom to identify alternative approaches. We also utilised good practice on programme management and risk management from sources including the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accounting (CIPFA) to develop our Affordable Housing audit criteria.

We work closely with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales to coordinate our respective programmes of work and share knowledge and expertise. For example, the Commissioner's team have provided training and advice and informed the development of audit criteria. We also regularly share our insights and audit findings with the Commissioner. This included engaging as he developed his strategy and programme of work.