West Midlands Sports Project Faces Calls for Enhanced Budget Monitoring
The West Midlands Combined Authority has been urged to strengthen its budget monitoring procedures for a key community sports initiative. This recommendation comes from an internal audit report that will be reviewed by the authority's Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee during their upcoming meeting on Monday, April 27.
Partnership with Sport England Under Scrutiny
In June 2023, the authority's Executive Board approved a long-term Memorandum of Understanding with Sport England. This agreement established a partnership aimed at promoting sport within local communities across the region. A lottery funding agreement was subsequently implemented in March 2024, providing £2.5 million to support various community sports schemes.
Internal auditors have expressed a reasonable level of assurance regarding how the programme is currently being managed. However, they have identified several critical areas requiring immediate improvement to ensure the project's long-term success and compliance with funding conditions.
Key Areas Requiring Improvement
The audit report specifically highlighted several deficiencies in the current monitoring and oversight processes:
- The programme budget profile needs updating to accurately reflect current progress within individual schemes
- Programme budget oversight and monitoring requires significant strengthening
- Individual scheme project monitoring meetings lack formal Terms of Reference
- Officers have not been requested to provide declarations of interest
- There are no overall programme project plans or comprehensive risk registers
- Individual scheme risk registers have not been consistently updated or reviewed during quarterly project monitoring meetings
- The Wellbeing and Prevention Team lacks supporting local standard operating procedures for managing the Sport England scheme programme
Additionally, responses from an Audit Information Governance questionnaire revealed that the Health and Communities Team currently has no designated data protection lead, though the team has expressed a desire to ensure compliance and has requested further advice on this matter.
Positive Aspects and Good Practice
Despite these concerns, the audit report also acknowledged several areas of good practice within the programme:
- Robust grant agreements are in place for the four WMCA Sport England schemes reviewed, providing adequate governance arrangements for reporting, monitoring, evaluation, and financial oversight
- Delivery and evaluation plans for approved Sport England schemes have been formally agreed upon and are periodically reported against
- The evaluation plans are managed internally to capture outputs, outcomes, and impacts in partnership with Hartpury University, demonstrating a robust approach
- Consistency in reporting across projects informs future project delivery and wider policy implications
- Established and effective change control processes and reporting arrangements are in place for approved Sport England schemes
The report concluded that while there has been steady progress with the programme of schemes utilising the £2.5 million funding from Sport England, implementing the recommended improvements would significantly reduce risk and ensure the achievement of the programme's aims and objectives.
