Issue - meetings

To receive an update from Councillor Charlotte Morley on her work during 2019/20 in her capacity as Portfolio Holder for Finance.

Councillor Charlotte Morley presented an update on the work carried out to date during the 2019/20 municipal year in her capacity as Executive Portfolio Holder for Finance.

Audit of Accounts

The Committee was informed that it was recommended best practice that at the end of each financial year local authority accounts were fully audited by an external auditor and the audit signed off by 30^th September.  Local authorities in England were allocated an external auditor as part of a national procurement exercise which took place every five years to ensure that a Council’s external audit function remained independent and objective and in 2018 the Council’s appointed auditor changed from KPMG to BDO.

It was reported that the Council’s allocated External Auditor, BDO, had not yet signed off the Council’s accounts for the 2018/19 financial year. It was reported that this situation was not unique to Surrey Heath and approximately 40% of local authorities in England and Wales were in a similar position.  Officers had been pressing BDO as to when the audit would be complete and BDO had intimated in a letter to the Council dated 30^th July 2019 that the delay had been caused by a lack of resources; a factor that was impacting on all the Surrey authorities in BDO’s portfolio.  Councillor Morley and Councillor McClafferty, Chairman of the Audit and Standards Committee, would be meeting with representatives from BDO on 6^th December 2019 try and bring the matter to a conclusion.  If there was no resolution at this meeting then the matter would be reviewed by the Audit and Standards and Executive Committees.

The Committee was informed that the Head of Finance had written to Public Sector Audit Appointments (PPSA), the body responsible for the procurement and appointment of external audit firms, to provide feedback on the poor performance that the Council had experienced. 

It was agreed that if the audit had not been concluded by the end of January 2020 then further representations would be made to the PSAA to express the Council’s dissatisfaction with the situation and seek appropriate redress. 

Benefits

It was reported that the Council’s performance when processing housing benefits claims was monitored by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Council was currently performing in the top quartile.  Further benchmarking of the service was carried out against over local authorities and the most recent benchmarking had concluded that the authority’s performance fell within the expected range and that performance had improved over the past twelve months following a recruitment exercise and reduction in the number of complicated claims being received.

The Committee thanked Councillor Morley for her update.