Agenda item

The Committee considered its updated 12-month rolling work programme.  In view of the long list of items scheduled for the 29 September meeting, the Chairman and Vice-Chairman had suggested that a special meeting of the Committee be convened on 6 October 2022 to deal with some of the business listed in the Work Programme for the September meeting. 

Subject to the Committee’s approval, it was suggested that the business to be dealt with at each meeting be as follows:

29 September 2022

Financial Monitoring 2022-23 Period 3 (April to July 2022)

Capital and Investment Outturn Report 2021-22

Revenue Outturn Report 2021-22

Housing Revenue Account Final Accounts 2021-22

Monitoring of S.106 Contributions

Future of Internal Audit

6 October 2022

The Council’s Constitution: Review and update of Financial Procedure Rules

Data Protection and Information Security Update Report

Freedom of Information Compliance update

Councillor Training and Development Update

It was also suggested that the following items be added to the 17 November 2022 meeting:

·       Annual Report of the work of the Corporate Governance & Standards Committee

·       Interim report on progress with implementation of audit recommendations in relation to the audit review on Safeguarding which had been reported to the Committee in November 2021.

At its meeting in April 2022, the Committee had received an update report from Grant Thornton on progress with the external audit of the Council’s 2020-21 statement of accounts.  The Chairman had agreed to allow a further Audit Progress Report from Grant Thornton to be considered at this meeting, a copy of which had been appended to the Supplementary Information Sheet.

It was noted that the Council’s audit of its statement of accounts for 2020-21 by Grant Thornton remained in progress.  The audit planning process commenced in June 2021 which was later than anticipated due to the late sign off of the 2019-20 accounts in March 2021.  The Council’s production of the accounts for 2020-21 had been delayed beyond the statutory deadline of 31 July 2021. This had been due to a number of factors:

(a)   the late running of the previous year’s audit, meant that the finance team had limited capacity to prepare for closure of the 2020-21 accounts

(b)   implementation of the new finance system during 2020-21 and the fact that it was the first year that the accounts has been closed on that system

(c)   turnover of staff within the finance team during 2020-21 meant that a number of staff in key roles were new to the Council shortly before the closedown process had commenced

(d)   the on-going impact of Covid and impact of remote working, particularly remote auditing

The Council had published its accounts for 2020-21 on 15 October 2021, and Grant Thornton had commenced their audit in December 2021.  Whilst progress was being made, there were still a number of areas that were outstanding and therefore although the audit had recommenced in late June 2022 it had now been paused again to allow the finance team the capacity to continue with the production of the Council’s accounts for 2021-22.  It was intended to re-engage the audit from the week commencing 8 August 2022.

Although the statutory deadline for the production of the Council’s 2021-22 accounts was 31 July 2022, the Council had set itself an internal deadline of 31 May 2022 to produce its accounts in anticipation of the statutory deadline returning to that date in future.  Whilst the Council had made initial good progress with the closedown of its accounts and the production of the draft statement of accounts, it had not met the internal deadline.  Due to the re-engagement of the audit in June, progress then slowed considerably.  As a result, the Chief Finance Officer made a decision in mid-July to pause the 2020-21 audit and re-focus resource on the production of the 2021-22 accounts.

Significant effort was being made by the finance team to ensure that the accounts were completed by the deadline of 31 July 2022.  It was still currently anticipated that the deadline would be met but there was a risk that publication of the accounts might slip into the first week of August 2022.  

The Committee

RESOLVED:

(1)   That, subject to the above changes including the proposed additional meeting to be convened on 6 October 2022, the updated 12 month rolling work programme, as detailed in Appendix 1 to the report submitted to the Committee, be approved.

(2)   That the Audit Progress Report submitted by Grant Thornton be noted.

Reason:

To allow the Committee to maintain and update its work programme.