Issue - meetings

To consider a report setting out the audited Financial Statements for the 2016/17 financial year and summarising the work undertaken by the Council’s External Auditors to discharge their statutory functions.

The Committee received a report setting out the Council’s audited Financial Statements for 2016/17 and the External Auditor’s ISA260 Report for 2016/17.

Neil Hewitson, KPMG, presented the ISA260 External Audit Report 2016/17. The report set out any key issues identified as a result of KPMG’s audit of the Council’s financial statements for the year ending 31 March 2017 and provided an assessment of the Authority’s arrangements to secure value for money. The Auditors were pleased to report that unqualified opinions had been issued in respect of both the financial statements and value for money arrangements. It had been concluded that the Authority had proper arrangements in place to ensure that it took properly informed decisions and effectively deployed resources to achieve planned and sustainable outcomes for local residents.

The report included one recommendation arising from the audit. This concerned the risk around producing the accounts in accordance with the new timetable next year. This brings the unaudited accounts publication date to 31^st May from 30^th June and the audit completion date to 31^st July from 30^th September. The Council is seeking to address this through having an early closure in January to finalise the first 10 months and ensuring that the JPUT reports on time. All of the previous year’s recommendations had been addressed and cleared. 

It was reported that although the Council had produced its draft parent financial statements in line with statutory deadlines, however it was essential that the Council put plans in place to ensure that the required information was received from the subsidiary company in a timely fashion in future.

Arising from Members’ questions and comments the following points were noted:

·         In order to meet financial deadlines, the Council’s assets were individually valued by a professional valuer as at the 31^st December each year.  An analysis by the auditors of the movement in property indices in the period from 1^st January to the 31^st March indicated that property values could have increased by potentially £471k. The Executive Head of Finance decided not to make this adjustment as the use of an index was only a representation of the movement in the property market as a whole and not based on a review of individual Council assets. As the adjustment was below the auditors £900,000 materiality threshold they were content for the adjustment not to be made.

·         The Council’s Information Governance Manager was running mandatory training for all Council staff on the Council’s duty to comply with the General Data Protection Regulations and consideration was being given to the role of a Data Protection Officer.

·         It was considered important that all members were familiar with the new data protection regulations and it was agreed that data protection training for members should be provided.

RESOLVED that:

      i.        The Chairman of the Committee approves the Financial Statements on behalf of the Council.

     ii.        The Executive Head of Finance’s Letter of Representation to the Auditors be approved.