Agenda item

The Audit Committee received a report of the Director of Finance that presented an update on the current position regarding the audit and approval of the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts. The report presented an update on the Council’s Statement of Accounts for the financial year 2021/22 and highlighted the current position of the external audit by Mazars LLP. The report also confirmed the revised audit deadline for 2022/23 as 30^th November 2022 and provided an update on the CIFPA Consultation on Infrastructure Assets.

The Council was required to prepare a Statement of Accounts for each financial year in accordance with statutory timelines and accounting practices. The accounts were subject to scrutiny and approval by the Council’s Audit Committee.

The Council had submitted its draft financial statements to the External Auditors, Mazars LLP, on 31^st May 2022. For 2021/22, and as in previous years, Authorities must publish the dates of their public inspection period, providing a public notice on their websites when the public inspection period commences. The Council published such a notice and advised that the public inspection period ran from 1^st June 2022 to 14^th July 2022. No questions or challenges had been received during the inspection period.

In line with good practice, the draft Statement of Accounts had been issued to members of the Audit Committee. The presentation of the draft Statement of Accounts provided Audit Committee Members with the opportunity to review the Council’s year-end financial position before they were required to formally approve the accounts. The Statement of Accounts was presented, with a covering report outlining key issues, to the Audit Committee at its meeting of 21^st June 2022. This gave members of the Audit Committee the opportunity to consider the key issues and ask officers and the representative of the External Auditor any relevant questions. All matters raised were addressed at the meeting to the satisfaction of the Committee.

The Committee were informed that the audit process cannot be fully finalised until all the value for money work is finalised and the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) audit is completed. The WGA audit, it was explained, could not be undertaken yet and was programmed for later in the year.

Regarding the holdup to the WGA process, this was due to a delay by HM Treasury in issuing the WGA Toolkit for 2020/21. This meant that the Council had not been able to prepare its WGA and the External Auditor had not been able to finalise the audit of the accounts for the financial year 2020/21. The Council was to submit its WGA for 2020/21, in line with the updated deadline of 31^st July 2022. Until the audit of the WGA is completed, the 2020/21 audit therefore remained open. Once the 2020/21 audit process was formally completed, the Council would advertise the outcome.

Following the conclusion of the audit of the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts, the production of the VFM opinion and WGA audit work, the Council will advertise the completion of the 2021/22 audit process on its website and update Members of the Audit Committee. The timeline for this will be subject to the outcome of the consultation of the accounting arrangements for Infrastructure Assets (which is a national issue impacting on every Local Authority).

Resolved:

1.    That the report be noted.

2.    The committee notes the reasons why the 2020/21 Whole of Government Accounts process is not complete and cannot therefore yet be signed-off.