Agenda item

Audit Committee Work Plan

Minutes:

The Committee received a report providing the indicative work plan for the period 2nd June, 2021 to 1st July, 2022.

 

It was noted that the Workshop/Development session meeting was to be held on the 13th October, 2021 at 2.00 pm and the Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Assurance stated that he would email Members requesting potential items for discussion to be forwarded to him as a matter of urgency.  It was likely that there were more items raised than time allowed and if this was the case, any outstanding issues would be dealt with in the training/awareness sessions planned for immediately before meetings of the Committee.

 

The date for the receipt of the report from the Auditors and the ISA 260 report was still planned for the 17th November with formal approval by Council on the 25th November, 2021.  The report on Value for Money from the External Auditors would be submitted to the meeting on the 19th January, 2022.

 

The draft accounts were already available on the Council’s website and a brief comment from the Council would be published by the 30th September, 2021 explaining that the audit was still ongoing.  It was the intention that the External Auditor’s Opinion would be published by the 30th November, 2021 giving a true and fair clean and unqualified audit opinion (assuming that the audit demonstrated this).  That opinion would be permitted to go into the accounts which would be published on the website as an audited version by 30th November.  The one element of the opinion that wouldn’t be issued was the Audit Certificate formally concluding the audit year.  In view of the ‘de-coupling’ of the Value for Money work this year from the main audit work and the fact that the VFM work would be finalised at a later date, the accounts published on the 30th November would not include the Audit Certificate paragraph.  This was no different from any other authority

 

RESOLVED that the core work plan for meetings of the Audit and Governance Committee be approved and reviewed on a regular basis.

Supporting documents: