Audit and Assurance

Taith has a right to carry out audit and assurance visits as included in your Grant Agreement letter. This is to check that the Terms & Conditions of your Taith award have been met and to provide assurance that the funding has been spent in accordance with the policies and procedures of your organisation.

This is in addition to your reporting requirements for your Taith award.

There are two types of audit or assurance checks which will be undertaken by the Taith Grants & Finance team:

Desktop – these can take place during and after a project has closed following the final payment of the Taith award. This check is undertaken remotely, and you will be asked to complete a checklist and send supporting information to Taith. This is the lowest level of compliance check.

On-site – these can take place during and after a project has closed following the final payment of the Taith award. This check is undertaken on-site at the Grant Recipient’s location and is the highest level of compliance check.

Assurance and audit checks will normally work on a sample basis as it will usually not be feasible to validate all expenditure or activity within the time available to complete the audit, except for smaller projects. Generally, the sample selected will be equal to at least 10% of the project value (or 10% of the funding incurred to date if the project is still ongoing).

All Grant Recipients that have been successful in their application for additional funding will automatically be subject to a desktop check.

The Taith audit and assurance check programme will select Grant Recipients for a desktop or an on-site visit based on set criteria which will factor in a review of monthly, quarterly, interim and final reports, a Grant Recipients’ risk level and the value of the grant award. Grant Recipients will receive notification 14 working days in advance if they are subject to a desktop check and 30 working days in advance if they are subject to an on-site visit.

Familiarise yourself with the compliance requirements for monitoring and audit at an early stage of your Taith project which are detailed in your Grant Agreement letter and Schedules.

You should regularly review your project to ensure that it is being carried out in accordance with Taith Terms and Conditions and your organisation’s practices and procedures.

The Taith Grants and Finance team will send the relevant documentation to you in line with the timelines in the above question which will include who from your organisation should lead on and support this process from the grant recipient’s side.

Please refer to the relevant Programme Guide and sections of the Operational Handbook which can be accessed via the Grant Recipient area on the Taith website.

If you have any queries, please send them to support@taith.wales

There are 3 ratings to an assurance / audit check as follows:

Satisfactory: evidence demonstrates full compliance with the requirements of the programme guide.

Partially satisfactory: there is a delay in the grant recipient providing the evidence and / or some of the evidence shows non-compliance with the programme guide requirements, but the non-compliance is minor or may be the result of human error.

Unsatisfactory: evidence is not available from the grant recipient, or the evidence provided shows non-compliance with the requirements of the programme guide.

Follow up actions are required for all elements of the audit where the results are either unsatisfactory or partially satisfactory.

If you are required to provide additional evidence due to shortcomings identified in the check, you should respond within 10 working days.

For queries or disputes about the findings of the check, the aim should be to resolve these within 14 working days of the audit report being issued. Grant recipients who dispute the results of the check and are unable to reach agreement with Taith have recourse to the appeals policy.

For Pathway 1 projects awarded £50,000 or over, a Certificate of Expenditure will be required to be submitted with the final report.

You should factor this into your project management at the start and ensure that these are scheduled in enough time with your independent auditor / accountant.

Please note that this is separate from an organisation’s annual year end exercise.

This cost can be included in your organisational support costs.

For Schools– an authorised appropriate signatory from the Local Authority can sign this.

A template for this is provided in the Schedules of your Grant Agreement letter.