Agenda item

Report of the Corporate Director (Resources, Environment and Cultural Services) presenting the draft Statement of Accounts.

Report of the Corporate Director (Resources, Environment and Cultural Services) presenting the draft Statement of Accounts.

The statutory deadline for approval of accounts is 31 July 2020 but due to the pandemic this was extended to 31 August 2020. Despite the additional pressures of the pandemic the team worked tirelessly to deliver the accounts in the normal timeframe. An excellent achievement that only a handful of local authorities achieved.

As outlined in EY’s report the Council have to wait for the pension fund audit to be finalised at County level. With this delay and the impact of the pandemic, the audit will be finalised in Summer 2020.

No material changes to the accounting policies for 2019/20 accounts. The accounts reflect the outturn position and the reserves movements that were reported and approved at Cabinet. As a result of the pandemic there have been a number of additions to the accounts, including the additional commentary and narrative report, the additional explanations in the critical judgement supplied and further sensitivity analysis in the assumptions and estimates made.

R.Baker thanked Helen, Yamini and the wider finance team for all their hard work and dedication in delivering the accounts at such challenging circumstances and all the auditors’ flexible approach to the audit and delivering it remotely.

Question asked by S.Markiewicz – In the report item 8.1, Law and Administration had the best part of £400,000 additional outlay this year. Planning also had additional outlay this year which has been put as ‘due to higher than budgeted use of agency staff’. What caused the excess in Law and Administration? When it comes to planning, use of agency staff is good when you got short term projects that need additional staff but is there a systemic issue that needs to be addressed?

R.Baker answered – In Law and Administration and Planning, there were difficulties in recruiting and additional costs relating to local plan – needing more resources. In terms of longer term, it will be picked up in the modernisation reviews where they will review recruitment and retention policies and the Council’s workforce strategy. The Corporate Director (Resources, Environment and Cultural Services) added that at the June Cabinet meeting it was highlighted in the Financial Outturn report why Law and Administration had an additional outlay. There were two elements highlighted – firstly, resources in the team and secondly the elections, they were elections in May and December 2019. The budget was not created for that but has been resolved going forward.

Question asked by S.Markiewicz – Item 8.4 Increase in current liabilities, later in the report it goes to look at new borrowing etc. Is some of this a timing issues? How has it become a much over-anticipated budget?

R.Baker answered – A big part of that £7million is to do with the move from long term to short term borrowing. It is to do with our repayment profile for the HRA self-financing loans.

RESOLVED:

The Committee agreed to grant delegated authority to Corporate Director (Resources, Environment and Cultural Services) in consultation with the Chairman of the Audit Committee to approve the Statement of Accounts for 2019/20 and to sign the letter of representation.  It is also expected that an email notification will be sent to all Audit Committee members once the audit on the statement is concluded and that a copy of the EY audit report will also be shared with members electronically.