Meeting documents

The Director of Grant Thornton introduced the report and the new Audit Manager, Ashley Allen.  She explained that the team was now complete after the recent changes of staff.  The 2014/15 final accounts audit was on track and there were no problems that she was aware of, the audit needed to be signed off by the 30^th September 2015. 

There had been 2 objections to the closing of the 2013/14 audit, details of which were explained to the new members of the Audit Committee: one complaint had not been upheld and the concluding statement to that effect had been circulated a few months ago.  The other objection was nearing a conclusion, but the consideration of documents and a Statement of Reasons need to be completed before being issued to the complainant.  Once the objection is concluded the certificate closing the 2013/14 audit would be signed.

It was brought to member’s attention that a similar objection could possibly be raised again by the same complainant (as was her right) before the 2014/15 audit could be closed.

The Director of Grant Thornton pointed members to material on their website which Audit Committee members could download and may find useful. She was to meet with both the Assistant Director Finance and Corporate Services and the Assistant Director Legal and Corporate Services shortly regarding the Local Governance Review 2015 and relevant training focusing on the three key issues as detailed in the report: Governance of the organisation ; Governance in working with others  and Governance of stakeholder relations.

 The Director of Grant Thornton felt that local authorities needed to ensure that their core objectives and values were fulfilled through many other agencies, which suggested a greater role for scrutiny and a need to make sure local public sector Bodies' arrangements were as transparent as possible for stakeholders.

She also referred to the national report: Evolution of Local Governance and Rising to the Challenge she considered that district councils tended to manage better in response to the challenge of austerity. 

In conclusion she mentioned that Legislation had recently been passed to bring forward the deadlines for the preparation and audit of Local Government financial statements from 2017/18 onwards. The timeframes for the preparation of the financial statements and their subsequent audit would be reduced by one month and two months respectively.  Local authorities and their auditors would have to make real changes in how they work to ensure they could achieve this deadline.

In response, the SSDC Finance Manager replied that SSDC would not have an issue with the change of date as their accounts were usually produced by June each year.  The Finance Team work with Grant Thornton throughout the year and they both worked hard to ensure that there were no risks. As requested a copy of the ‘Guide to Local Authority Accounts’ would be included with the minutes of this meeting.

The chairman concluded that SSDC was aware of the need to ensure that their core objectives and values were fulfilled through many other agencies and SSDC was already looking at integrating services and they already had a good scrutiny set up and a very competent financial team.

Members were content to note the report.

RESOLVED: That Audit Committee noted the Grant Thornton Audit Committee update.