Issue - meetings

This report presents the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts and Grant Thornton’s Audit Findings report following the external audit.

The Committee received a report presenting the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts and Grant Thornton’s Provisional Audit Findings report following the external audit.

The following matters were considered by the Committee:

a)            The possible delay in the completion of the Audit: A concern was raised by a Councillor regarding the fact that the completion of the audit is dependent on the completion of the audit of the Surrey County Council Pension Fund.  It was noted that there is a risk that this audit will not conclude by the end of November, which would prevent any Surrey district from publishing their audited accounts in time.  Mr Paul Cuttle from the external auditors, Grant Thornton, stated that the delay in finalising this audit, was caused by factors outside the control of Grant Thornton.

b)            Financial Statements – other communication requirements: it was agreed that the word “other” would be removed from the commentary relating to “Matters in relation to fraud” on page 28 of the agenda, so that the commentary reads: “We have previously discussed the risk of fraud with the Audit & Scrutiny Committee. We have not been made aware of any incidents in the period and no other issues have been identified during the course of our audit procedures”.

c)            Fees for infrastructure assets: A Councillor queried what work would be done under the amount stated for “Infrastructure assets” on page 37 of the report.  It was explained that since 2021, any Council who holds material infrastructure assets cannot have their accounts signed off until government performs certain statutory overrides.  This has necessitated additional work having to be performed by the auditors in this regard.  This additional work was not part of the initial scoping.

Following consideration, it was resolved to:

(1)      Approve the Statement of Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2022;

(2)      Receive the Provisional Audit Findings for 2021/22;

(3)      Agree the management action in response to the audit recommendations detailed at Appendix A of the Provisional Audit Findings report;

(4)      Agree that the Chair or Vice Chair of Audit and Scrutiny Committee and the Chief Finance Officer sign the Letter of Representation on behalf of the Council;

(5)      Delegate any further amendments to the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts to the Chief Finance Officer in consultation with the Chair or Vice Chair of Audit and Scrutiny Committee.