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Newport City Council is making “emerging and ongoing improvement” in its payment of adoption allowances to families.

The council’s system for making allowance payments was declared “unsatisfactory” in July 2023, including delays to assessments of new claims, and failures to always carry out independent checks.

At a meeting of the council’s governance and audit committee, on Thursday, members heard a further audit had been completed at the end of 2024.

The auditors found there is now a “generally sound system of governance, risk management and controls in place for the management and administration of adoption allowances”.

They judged the council had “areas of emerging and ongoing improvement”, which “reflect the work in progress of improvements to process and procedure initiated in 2024”.

Some weaknesses in the process remain, but are not categorised as critical.

The auditors accepted the current way of handling allowances is “in its infancy” and more time is needed to “fully embed” changes.

At the meeting, committee chairman Gareth Chapman said: “We’re in a far better position now than we were previously.”

He thanked the team of officers for “putting in a tremendous amount of time to get us where we are now” but warned the procedure could still face further scrutiny – including the possibility of an unannounced inspection by auditors.

“Don’t rest on your laurels, because the likelihood is we’ll do a ‘secret shopper’”, Mr Chapman advised the officers present.