Agenda item

The report of the Chief Finance Officer seeks approval of the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts and presents Grant Thornton Audit Report.

The report of the Chief Finance Officer presented the final audited statement of accounts for 2021/22 and Grant Thornton’s final report of their audit findings.

The Head of Finance provided the Committee with the following information:

·  The covering report set out the significant amendments that have been made to the accounts since the original draft accounts were approved in July 2022. It was noted that any events that occur up until the point Grant Thornton authorise the accounts may require further changes.

·  Since the agenda was published the Council had been made aware of an increase to Grant Thornton’s audit fee. Therefore, the relevant disclosure note in the final published accounts will be amended to show this increase.

·  There had been minor wording changes and presentation changes identified by the Council and Grant Thornton, but there were no substantive changes in comparison to the version of the accounts that had been circulated to the Committee. To date the Council were unaware of any further events that could cause changes to the Statement of Accounts.

·  Appendix 1 to the report is the Management Representation Letter which Grant Thornton request is provided at the close of the audit each year. It was noted that officers had reviewed the wording of the letter and they were unaware of any reasons why the letter should not be signed on behalf of the Council.

Grant Thornton presented their audit report providing the following information to the Committee:

·  The final ISA 260 report had been provided to Members as supplementary information.  Two interim versions of the ISA 260 report had been presented to the Committee at previous meetings. Therefore, attention was focused on the executive summary to aid the updates that had occurred since the previous version submitted to the Committee in November 2023. It was noted that all updates were presented in green text.

·  A number of adjustments to the accounts had been identified mainly around key risk areas of valuation of property, plant and equipment and pensions. It was noted that whilst significant in terms of value they did not impact on the usable reserves of the Council or the Medium-Term Financial Strategy.

·  It was noted that the level of engagement since the last meeting in February had been good with all working together to clear the residual areas of the audit that had been outstanding. Therefore, the audit fieldwork had been concluded and this could be presented as a final report. Grant Thornton wished to maintain the level of engagement seen in the last few weeks until the end of September for the 2022/23 audit process. They thanked the team for the level of engagement over the past few weeks.

·  The accounts have now been updated and adjustments agreed and were being cleared internally within Grant Thornton around the technical review, and the audit quality team. They were working through the completion steps and expected to sign off before the end of the month.

The Chair thanked all the officers involved and Grant Thornton for getting the 2021/22 accounts to this point to be signed off.

RESOLVED –

a)  To receive the audit report of the Council’s external auditors on the 2021/22 accounts and to note that there are expected to be no unadjusted audit differences to the accounts.

b)  To consider the updated 2021/22 Statement of Accounts, and to approve these as the Council’s final audited accounts for the year. To authorise the Chair to acknowledge this approval on behalf of the Committee by signing the appropriate section within the Statement of Responsibilities on page 1 of the accounts.

c)  For the Chair to sign the management representation letter on behalf of the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee.