Issue - meetings

Statement of Accounts 2019/2020

Meeting: 02/03/2021 - Audit Committee (Item 8)

8 Statement of Accounts 2019/2020 pdf icon PDF 759 KB

To consider the report of the Chief Officer Resources.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Consideration was given to the report of the Senior Business Partner Capital & Corporate Accounting.

 

It was agreed that Item Nos. 7 and 8 be considered simultaneously.

 

The Senior Business Partner presented the Council’s Statement of Accounts for 2019/20.  He reported that during the initial stages of the Covid 19 pandemic critical services were prioritised with staff being redeployed into those critical services to support the Council’s response. As a result, the completion of the Statement of Accounts was delayed with Welsh Government recommending that LA’s prepare their draft accounts by 31st August, 2020 and publication of

final audited accounts by 30th November, 2020.

 

The Council’s draft Statement of Accounts were reported to Audit Committee on 29th September and since that time, a number of adjustments have been identified and are reported to Audit Committee.

 

As required under Section 11 of the 2014 Regulations and Section 29 of the 2004 Act, the Accounts and other documents were made available for public inspection for 20 working days, from Monday 5th October until Friday, 30th October, 2020 inclusive and no requests for information or inspection were received during that period.

 

The Officer confirmed that Audit Wales had now finalised the detailed financial audit of the Accounts and prepared its statutory Audit of Accounts Report (International Standards on Auditing or ISA 260 report), Item no. 8 on the agenda.

 

The Authority anticipated receiving an unqualified signed audit opinion from the Appointed Auditor. At this stage, Audit Wales are unable to issue a certificate of completion of audit for 2019/2020, pending the certification of audits in respect of prior financial years.

 

He concluded that if agreed by the Audit Committee, the Statement of Accounts would be signed-off by the Chief Officer Resources and the Chair of the Audit Committee.

 

The Audit Wales Officer then presented the Audit Wales Blaenau Gwent CBC 2019-20 Audit of Accounts report.

 

He said overall this was a positive report and confirmed that Audit Wales intended to issue an unqualified audit opinion on this year’s Accounts.  He then went briefly through the report and highlighted points contained therein. 

 

He said Auditors could never provide complete assurance that accounts are correctly stated, and instead worked to a level of ‘materiality’, which was set to try to identify and correct misstatements that might otherwise cause a user of the accounts to be misled, and the level of materiality was £2.66m for this year’s audit.  However, there were some areas of the Accounts that may be of more importance to the reader, and in this regard a lower materiality level had been set for these, i.e. Senior Officer pay £1,000 and Related Parties £100,000.

The Audit Wales Officer said the Covid pandemic had had a significant impact on all aspects of society and continued to do so, and this resulted in the draft accounts being completed for audit by 23rd September, 2020, some three months after the original timetable.  However, he pointed out that Audit Wales were grateful to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8