Agenda item

The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 required Local Authorities to prepare a Statement of Accounts in accordance with proper accounting practice that were required to be approved and signed by the Council’s Audit & Governance Committee.

The Committee received the draft Statement of Accounts for 2020/21 (Appendix 1 to the Committee report) and were informed that the Council was reporting a £400k underspend on outturn for 2021, increasing the General Fund balance to £49m (with £2m use of general fund reserves committed in 2021/22, bringing General Fund balance to £47m).  This was the first time the Committee had been presented the Council’s draft Statement of Accounts for 2021.  However, the external audit had commenced in September 2021 and was ongoing.  The three main adjustments made so far were:

(i)                  Group Accounts - the Council was now having to complete group accounts as well as single entity accounts due to its holdings in Consilio Property Limited and Aylesbury Vale Estates Limited.

(ii)                Property, Plant and Equipment – there had been several adjustments within this note. This including rework of the opening balances to split out historic revaluations and movements to re categorise Intangible assets and Investment assets and assets under construction.

(iii)              Cash Flow Statement – Correction of mis statements within the original draft accounts.

The next steps would be for the outstanding work on the audit to be finalised over the coming weeks and any further amendments resulting from this work actioned before the accounts are then re-presented to the Committee for approval and sign-off by the Chair of the Committee and S151 Officer.  The draft accounts were presented to this meeting to allow Members the opportunity to ask questions of the officer responsible for their production, as she would shortly be leaving the authority. The Committee recognised the significant amount of work that had gone into the Statement of Accounts and congratulated the team on their efforts.

Members sought additional information on the draft Statement of Accounts and were informed:

-          That the production of the draft Statement of Accounts had been delayed due to staffing capacity difficulties, consequently the accounts had been submitted to Grant Thornton late. As it was the first year of operation for the authority there was a significant volume of work.  Grant Thornton had not been the external auditors for the legacy District Councils and had made a lot more requests for information on opening balances than had been anticipated.    The Council had also had to contend with a number of staffing shortages and had found it difficult in bringing skilled staff in to support the work.

-          Mr Ian Murray, Grant Thornton (external auditors) reported that there had been challenges due to the accounting complications of being the authority’s first year of operation. The Grant Thornton team on site had other commitments to meet in February, notably to some NHS organisations, which would result in decreased external audit capacity during this period. The Committee heard that the external auditor had attempted to be accommodating and flexible, however had other clients they had made commitments to. The March meeting remained a feasible target for production of the final set of accounts. There remained a significant amount of open queries with officers, it was hoped these could be responded to over the February period. Members heard that around 200 queries had been responded to over the past two weeks, however many of those outstanding were particularly complicated and related to legacy authority transactions. The Committee expressed its dissatisfaction with the external auditor prioritising other commitments.

-          It was noted that only around 9% of local authorities had met their statutory deadlines for 2020/21. As noted above, staff recruitment had proven difficult, including attempts at employing interim staff. A lead officer had been appointed for the 2021/22 accounts; however, further recruitment difficulties were highlighted as a risk.

-          Members suggested that the narrative document be amended to ensure an accurate representation of Buckinghamshire and:

-          Reflected the pockets of deprivation in the county.

-          Made reference to the excellent work of the Council in dispersing covid grants to local businesses as well as the support the Council gave to the wider rollout of the vaccination programme.

-          Placed greater emphasis on climate change, displaying what the Council had achieved and what its wider aims were in this area.

-          Gave more context to the challenges faced by directorates including Children’s Services.

-          Provided context behind the customer experience metrics to understand outcomes and not only demand and was clear as to whether the Council met its obligation to the apprenticeship programme.

-          Reflected clawback of the rollover to Community Board funding.

-          Included reference to the approval of the Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan which impacted the whole county.

-          Gave further explanation to capital slippage.

-          As noted on page 34, a Member questioned whether Brexit was still considered a risk and required inclusion in the document.

-          The £400k underspend was considered small in comparison to the overall net and gross budgets and was a positive result given the covid challenges which had resulted in significant losses to income streams and saw an increased demand in services.

-          In relation to presentation of the accounts, Members requested that the group accounts on page 113 would benefit from having the accounts of the authority side by side; the table shown on page 68 of the reports pack would be amended to display the dates as 2020/21 rather than 2019/20; variances in the dedicated schools grants noted on pages 49 and 70 would be revisited as it was thought that these should be the same figure; the question marks appearing on page 86 would be removed in the final version and the document would be subject to further quality assurance checks before final sign off. 

RESOLVED –

That the draft Statement of Accounts for 2020/21 be noted.