Barnsbury Housing Association – Risk and Assurance Mapping Support

Barnsbury Housing Association (BHA) is a community-based housing provider with 300 homes in Barnsbury, Islington.

Objective

To ensure BHA had a comprehensive, current and coordinated record of controls and assurances in place across the three lines of defence for each key business area, supporting an appropriate and effective risk management and assurance framework.

What we did

DTP delivered a two-stage programme of support:

• We undertook an initial assurance mapping exercise with the leadership team, involving in-depth discussion and challenge around the controls and assurances across all operational areas, resulting in a new, up-to-date and comprehensive assurance map
• We reviewed key documents – including the risk register, internal audit plan, recent audit outcomes and performance dashboards – to triangulate information, perform a gap analysis and assess the relative strengths and potential areas for improvement in controls and assurance

Our analysis was discussed with the leadership team to ensure shared understanding, agreement of findings and to develop practical, proportionate and pragmatic recommendations.

What we achieved

DTP supported BHA in updating and enhancing its risk, controls and assurance framework. Our work provided clarity on the strength of controls and levels of assurance, identified priorities for internal audit planning and highlighted key risks and controls for review. The new assurance map offers BHA a mechanism for ongoing assessment of controls effectiveness, helping to inform future internal audit programmes and providing a basis for assurance to the organisation’s governance forums.