Assurance for housing boards
Board strategy, risk, assurance and internal audit.
Three hours on assurance for housing boards: the board's role in strategy, risk and oversight, internal audit standards and independence, and getting the most from the audit committee.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours
- Where
- Homes and residents
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Housing association board members, audit committee members and executives
Overview
A housing board does not run the organisation, yet it must be confident that strategy holds and assurance is real. Drawn from Homes, boards and residents, this course opens with the board's four strategic roles and McNulty and Pettigrew's spectrum from ratify to co-create, with Nokia and Netflix as contrasting cases. It then treats risk as a conversation, with the COSO components, appetite, tolerance and capacity, and the Carillion collapse. Internal audit follows, from the Global Internal Audit Standards to the Slough Borough Council case. It finishes on the audit committee's core functions from CIPFA and lessons from Croydon and Brick by Brick.
Aims
This course sets out to help housing boards test a strategy rather than simply approve it, set the risk tone and check that it holds, and draw more value from internal audit and the audit committee, so that the board relies on assurance rather than reassurance.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Apply the critical friend questions to challenge a strategic proposal, and identify the warning signs of strategic drift.
- Distinguish risk appetite, tolerance and capacity, and apply the lessons of Carillion to your board's own risk oversight.
- Assess the independence of internal audit, and use the four audit meeting questions to challenge reports on companies, investments and reserves.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Explain the board's four strategic roles and place your own board honestly on the spectrum from ratify to co-create.
- Explain the board's role in setting the risk tone and testing that it holds, as distinct from management's job of managing risk.
- Describe the structure of the Global Internal Audit Standards and the role they give the board or audit committee in governing internal audit.
- Explain the core functions of an audit committee and why its independence from management is its greatest asset.
- Apply testing tools, the critical friend questions and the standard for a good strategy paper to challenge a strategic proposal without writing it.
- Distinguish risk appetite, tolerance and capacity, and use the COSO components to test whether a risk system is working.
- Assess the independence of an internal audit function using reporting lines, access, resources, scope and the response to findings.
- Compare how audit committees are constituted across sectors, including the lay and independent member requirements in Wales and England.
Built from 2 parts.
3 hours of learning.
- 01Looking ahead, looking outBoard strategy, risk and assuranceBitesize · Good Governance2 modules
- 02The independent eyeInternal audit standards and audit committeesBitesize · Audit and Assurance2 modules