Veritau’s annual report 2022/23

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Veritau’s annual report 2022/23

22 August 2023

We’re pleased to share with you Veritau’s Annual Report for the year 2022/23.

In his introduction, our Chief Executive summarises the report:

“The public sector has continued to be faced with a number of ongoing challenges including financial pressures and an ever-increasing demand for services. Many organisations have also had to respond to incidents like data breaches or cyber-attacks. Despite this environment Veritau has had another excellent year.

We’ve continued to see strong growth in fee income with a year-on-year increase of 11.2%. Our client satisfaction and retention rates have also remained high. I’ve been pleased to receive excellent feedback from our clients, who value the professionalism and relevance of our services”.

Service Developments and Achievements:

Service developments and achievements during the year have included:

delivering support to the North Yorkshire local government reorganisation change programme. This included the development of new policies and processes, involvement in finance and IT related projects and workstreams, and the provision of training, guidance, and advice
developing a counter fraud e-learning course to raise awareness of the fraud risks associated with local government reorganisation
providing management support to the in-house internal audit / fraud team at Harrogate Borough Council
completing the transfer of employees and services from the former Harrogate Borough and Craven District Councils to Veritau on vesting day
completing work programmes and providing our annual internal audit opinions to the former district/borough audit committees ahead of vesting day
developing the subject access redaction service for schools and councils
providing data protection consultancy services to an increasing number of EdTech suppliers and other organisations, including the Wakefield Sport and Health Improvement Service and AJM Healthcare
supporting Ryedale District Council to achieve one of the only successful prosecutions for Covid grant fraud in the UK
achieving high levels of savings from counter fraud work. Cashable savings for all clients totalled £606k (2021/22 – £600k) whilst the total value of fraud and error detected was over £1m. Record savings of £67k were also achieved from NNDR investigations.

Other Service Developments and Achievements include:

leading a national Fighting Fraud and Corruption Locally working group on adult social care and being vice-chair of the Tenancy Fraud Forum (Yorkshire and Humberside)
delivering a number of well received fraud prevention and awareness campaigns, and related training courses to client staff
retaining our Investors in People (IIP) accreditation following an external assessment
receiving Good Business Charter (GBC) accreditation
developing the new eLearning platform (Veritau Learn) for our client schools and completing the full refresh of our library of eLearning courses
completing an upgrade of Sword, our audit case management system
completing the implementation of the new counter fraud case management system, OPUS
reviewing and updating Veritau’s data protection policy framework
formally adopting new hybrid working arrangements
restarting in-person training and development days
designing and implementing a new performance related pay (PRP) scheme
reviewing the pay and benefits offer for employees which resulted in a new annual leave scheme being adopted. We also introduced new arrangements to reimburse professional fees and agreed corporate membership schemes with GLL and Everyone Active to provide employees with access to discounted sports and leisure membership fees

About the Veritau Group

In 2009, North Yorkshire County Council and City of York Council came together to create Veritau Limited. The company expanded in 2012 when four more local authorities joined us to create the Veritau group. Early in 2020 we welcomed a further three member councils.

In 2023, as part of local government reorganisation (LGR), six of our existing member councils merged with two other district councils to form the unitary authority, North Yorkshire Council.

Our approach is designed to combine the best of private sector flexibility and innovation with public sector commitment.

The Veritau group also has many public sector clients outside of the core membership. These include housing associations, national park authorities, town councils, emergency services, and over 600 schools and academies.

We provide independent and impartial assurance designed to help organisations address the challenges of modern public sector delivery.