Harrow Council is set to pilot the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within its internal audit function to significantly enhance data analysis capabilities, with a focus on services such as Adult Services and Homelessness. This initiative is a key component of the council's Internal Audit Annual Plan for 2026/27, detailed in the Draft Internal Audit Plan 2026-27.

The plan, approved by the Governance, Audit, Risk Management and Standards Committee on Wednesday, 15 April 2026, details 64 project reviews and allocates 855 operational days. Tracy Barnett, Assistant Director of Audit & Anti-Fraud, presented the plan, emphasizing the AI pilot as a strategic move to expand testing capacity and identify trends of how things work and emerging risks by analyzing much bigger categories of data .

The idea is that we use AI so that we can do more larger amounts of testing, because at the moment, if we just use staffing resources to do that, we're very limited in the amount of testing we can actually conduct, Barnett stated. She reassured the committee that the AI pilot would complement existing procedures, with stringent measures in place to guarantee the relevance and accuracy of the data analysed. These robust methods will be developed as part of the terms of reference for each audit, ensuring procedures are in place to weed out, basically, what's going to be relevant and what's not going to be relevant .

The pilot, planned for the 2026/27 financial year, is intended to explore how AI can offer us more opportunities and help identify wider things that we're missing when we're doing the testing as we've done historically .

Concerns were raised during the meeting regarding the potential for data overwhelm and the need to ensure that what AI generates is actually relevant and accurate . The committee acknowledged the considerable increase in data that you're going to have to deal with as a result of using AI and the necessity of establishing clear procedures to manage this.

Barnett also clarified that the AI pilot is designed to augment existing capabilities, allowing the team to conduct more extensive testing than is currently possible with staffing resources alone. The effectiveness of the pilot will be evaluated during the 2026/27 financial year to determine its benefits and potential. The Internal Audit Charter Mandate 2026-27 outlines the broader objectives for the internal audit function during this period.