Agenda item

(Report of the External Auditors - Grant Thornton)

Mr John Gregory (External Auditors) presented the Audit Findings for Lichfield District Council year ended 31 March 2020 and detailed the key findings and other matters arising from the statutory audit in the preparation of the Council’s financial statements.  He reflected on the technical content and the headlines on Covid-19 and said he felt things had been managed very well at Lichfield in terms of the pandemic not getting in the way with the preparation, audit process or the Statement of Accounts.  Mr Gregory said the External Audit process had taken longer because of the change to remote working but they had done the vast majority of the work now and things had moved on since the written report.  He stated some things that were recorded as outstanding were, in fact, no longer outstanding and explained.  He said Grant Thornton were proposing an unqualified opinion, just drawing the reader’s attention to the material uncertainty that our own valuer had put on the Plant and Equipment valuation, which is disclosed in the financial statements.

Mr Gregory said the value for money arrangement conclusion had taken on a risk based approach and did not identify any risks because of the level of reserves Lichfield District Council had.  Even adding in the significant risk of Covid-19 and revisiting the risks, their conclusion was the same – Lichfield District Council is sufficiently far away from going concern issues and in a much stronger position than many authorities.

Mr Gregory highlighted that Appendix B had the final fee to be confirmed and he said that although there were no particular issues, all of the audits had taken longer than hoped because of Covid-19 and agile working.  Currently Grant Thornton, as a firm, were thinking through what they were going to do about this additional time and they had been talking to PSAA, their appointing body, about their attitude to seeking fees and/or getting funding from CLG direct to help with this but it would be a future discussion when things are clearer. 

Mr Gregory concluded that once they get the necessary information from the County Council Auditors of the Staffordshire Pension fund they would be able to move to an opinion and he stated that Lichfield District Council are ahead of many other authorities.  He said this had been because of the good work and responsiveness of staff in the Finance team to the External Audit team and passed on his personal thanks.

Questions were asked and answered by Mr Gregory in relation to the risk assessment process and the new process to be implemented next year.  The pension unadjusted amount was queried and Mr Gregory said the firm’s agreed line on this has actually changed as of that day -  they no longer think that the supporting evidence is strong enough for this to constitute an adjusting post-balance sheet event so they would not be asking us to change it any way anymore.

It was noted that because IRFS16 was delayed there was a £1500 credit to the planned audit fee.

Ms Griffiths said from a personal point of view, she felt the External Auditing had been incredibly difficult this year because of Covid-19 and remote working and in comparison to others it had been an incredibly smooth process at Lichfield and she would like to record a thank you to Mr Thomas and all in the finance team involved.

All members of the committee agreed that this External Auditor’s report was an excellent judgement of Mr Thomas and his team and everyone expressed their thanks before the report was gratefully received.