Nottinghamshire Schools Portal

Internal Audits of Schools During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Due to the impact of Covid-19, our internal audit service to schools had been temporarily suspended, due to partial school closures and the need to develop an audit programme which could be largely delivered remotely. We are now preparing to restart our audit work, and we will soon be contacting those schools due an audit in the current financial year.

We will not be able to carry out all the school audits due in this financial year as a result of the suspension, and this means that some will need to slip into the next financial year (2021/22). This also has a knock-on effect to audits due in future financial years, and they may also need to be carried out either later in the financial year they were due, or in the following financial year. As a result of this, no school will be chased for failing to complete their audit during the period of suspension.

The new audit due dates for all schools are as shown here:

If you have ordered an audit with an external provider you may wish to contact them about the new timetable, or continue as originally planned.

We are planning to carry out audits remotely wherever possible and we have updated our programme to reflect that. It is anticipated that remote school audits will be spread over several weeks, to allow time for collating and emailing documents, and arranging meetings.

If a face to face visit is deemed essential the school will be asked to provide a risk assessment for the visit, to establish the suitability of health and safety arrangements for the management of the Covid-19 risk e.g. social distancing, hygiene and welfare arrangements. This would be subject to the latest government and local authority guidelines.