25 Grant Thornton Audit Findings 2016/17 PDF 614 KB
To receive a report from Grant Thornton summarising their findings following an audit of the 2016/17 financial accounts.
To follow.
Minutes:
The Committee had before it, and NOTED, a report * from Grant Thornton, external auditors to the Council. This report highlighted significant findings arising from their audit as required by the International Standard of Auditing (UK & Ireland) 260, the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 and the National Audit Office Code of Audit Practice.
The report was presented by the Associate Director.
The contents of their findings report were summarised commencing with an update in relation to some issues that had been outstanding at the time of writing the report. This included reference to third party confirmation on investments with broker Prebon and receipt of a Pension Fund assurance letter from the auditor of the Devon County Council Pension Fund. Both had now been received.
In terms of the key audit issues the following points were made:
· They had not identified any adjustments that affected the Council’s reported financial position and there had been no challenges.
· With regard to the Pension Liability disclosed in the accounts this had increased by £16,502k, primarily as a result of the reduction in the discount rate applied by the actuary. The external auditors had reviewed all the assumptions applied and were assured that this was in line with the general application across Local Government pension schemes.
· Two weaknesses had been identified in the Council’s IT arrangements in relation to password complexity and this would be addressed by the Leadership Team. It was explained that as part of the annual Public Sector Network compliance review a company was employed to try to hack into the Council’s system. They had not been successful thus far, however, lessons had been learned as a result of this process.
Discussion took place regarding:
· All opportunities being in place to allow for the reporting of possible fraud should there be any suspicions.
· Audits were not designed to hone in on everything, risks were looked at and assurances sought that these were mitigated wherever possible.
· A risk had been identified around financial resilience and the need to have robust plans underpinning any savings plan. It was explained that reserves had been increased by £2m to provide a buffer against the on-going financial storm. A Medium Term Financial Plan would be presented to the Cabinet in October which would address these issues.
In conclusion, the Cabinet Member for Finance stated that Finance needed to be congratulated on a clean set of accounts as well as all service managers for bringing their areas in on budget.
The Chairman stated that he would be writing to individual officers to thank them personally for their efforts in allowing the Council to be one of the first authorities to sign off their accounts for the second year running. This was worth celebrating and a press release ought to be written as soon as possible.