Agenda item

Presented by Amber Banister

Progress Update

The 19/20 accounts Audit is now complete and the opinion is with the team.

The focus is now on the remaining work for 19 / 20, this includes the Housing Benefit certification, the work is due to start around 30 November and the deadline for completion is 31 January 2021.

The Pooling Housing Capital Receipt return is also still to be completed, the deadline for completion is 29 January 2021. The start date is still to be agreed.

The sector updates are included in the attached reports, however Amber would like to draw the committee’s attention to the NAO new code of practice, and this creates a change in the value for money work carried out by GT from 2021 onwards. The consolation has now been completed and the NAO guidance note was recently issued.

Going forward there will be changes to the way GT work, a few of the key changes are:

·         There will be a detailed commentary rather than just an opinion on the AFR, this will be more beneficial to the Council in terms of decision making,

·         The findings will no longer be in the AFR, they will be in a separate annual auditors report.

·         Recommendations will be more meaningful and will include the nature and the evidence around them, the impact of any weakness and what action they believe should be taken.

All of these changes have implications, time wise, it will take longer and due to the detail involved will require a more experienced team (managers and above). 

In terms of fees, because of the time and resourcing it requires GT are currently working through the impact of this, as it is a change of requirement and isn’t covered by the currently scale fee in place, GT are currently in discussions with PSAA, as this is a change across the sector they have suggested ways are looked at to be able to provide some funding.

Cllr Townsend would like to know if the audit fee will be changing going forward or if this affects the current fee, A.B confirmed the fee would remain the same for the current period but there are discussions about the change in fee going forward.

Cllr Birnie would like to know if it is possible to have a breakdown of the acronyms used in the reports. A.B confirmed she will aim to do this in future.

Cllr Symington would like more information regarding the improvement of property, plant equipment and pensions which is mentioned on page 5. A.B confirms this goes hand in hand with the fee variation letter which would have been received earlier in the year, this is in response to financial reporting council who are the regulator, requesting more in-depth work on PPE and Pensions. This also applies to Simplification of Accounts as mentioned on page 18. 

Councillor Symington notes the comment regarding the 1.9 Billion funding gap across the local authority sector mentioned on age 8, she would like to know as a council are we prepared for that. James Deane confirms yes we are prepared for it, and we continue to move forward as a Council in terms of our underlying sustainability. This links into how we plan to deal with the aftermath of COVID and how we plan to move forward once the immediate threat has gone and most of the finical implications have subsided. It is expected that the immediate impacts will start to tail out over the next 2 - 3 years. As a Council we are recommending that we deal with these pressures from the reserves, this will be reviewed after 12 months.

Councillor Symington, there are two recommendations which could be implemented immediately, one is to appoint one independent member to the Audit Committee and the other is to formalise the facility for the CEO, Monitoring officer and CFO to meet the key audit partner at least annually, the third thing is to present the annual accounts to full Council by and external auditor. She would like to ask the Chair if these things can be carried forward or at least recommended by the Audit committee, Councillor Symington would like it noted that she is in support of these recommendation especially for an appointment for an independent Committee Member. JD confirms he is in regular contact with the audit partner already.

Councillor Townsend supports what Councillor Symington has said, He requests a short report regarding the appointment to the Audit Committee and what implications that might have before the matter is brought back to the Audit Committee for further discussion.

Councillor Birnie would like clarification regarding the term “external”, AB confirms this would be someone external to the councillor and to the political parties who hold the relevant qualifications to bring extra knowledge to the Audit Committee.

Councillor Birnie feels this requires further discussion, he believes in order to do this it would involve a constitutional change and therefore the Audit committee would only be able to recommend as they are not capable of taking the decision alone, this would need to be a full council decision. JD confirms this is correct but is happy to provide a report to show the impact this would have. 

Councillor Symington would like it noted that she is wholly in favour of the Redmond report, she welcomes its recommendations, JD is also wholly supportive of the Redmond review.

Cllr Birnie believes the Devolution report is best dealt with by other committees and enquires if the addition of an external committee member is common place in other councils.  JD will provide a report to clarify all these details.