Issue - meetings

Members considered the Audited Statement of Accounts for 2020/2021.

An introduction was provided by the Section 151 Officer, who was pleased to advise that the Statement of Accounts 2020/21, had received an unqualified audit opinion.

The Statements reflected the Authority’s financial activity for the year up to 31 March 2020.

The Authority had continued to deliver it’s Executive Business Plan activities to achieve its corporate objectives, through investment projects and service delivery.

Whilst the Authority had not achieved the statutory deadline for the certification of the statement,  for reasons previously reported to Committee, the situation was not unique, with only 9% of authorities having met the 30 September deadline. 

The narrative report provided an illustrative and comprehensive view of the Council and it’s performance and achievements in delivering corporate plan objectives 

The Balance sheet (page 37)  detailed net liabilities of £2.543m which reflected the impact of a significant increase in the pension liability, and which was planned to reduce over a period of 20 years.

Useable reserves had increased from £24m to £29 with £18m earmarked for future investment and service improvements and to mitigate risk. 

The General Fund working balance was £7.3 of which £3.4m was unallocated and which exceeded the minimum requirement of £2.5m and which provided some resilience to changes in future funding in the medium term. 

The Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Account  (page 36) reflected £8.401m of net expenditure, of which a surplus on provision of services of £0.219m had been reconciled to the actual surplus from the Council’s  revenue activities  £5.534m which was contributed to the General Fund Balance and was net of £1.4m of support for ongoing projects, would be carried forward.

The Cash flow statement (page 38) showed a net outgoing of cash, reflecting the significant amount of grant funding the Authority was holding on behalf of Government and which would either be expended in the current year or returned to Government.

In terms of the accounts there had been a re-valuation of the pension fund to take into account the financial impacts of two legal cases, the McCloud judgement and The Goodwin case.  The re-valuations have been deemed below materiality at £232k and therefore the accounts have not been adjusted.

The S151 Officer placed on record her thanks to the Finance Team for their work in preparing the Statements, and invited questions from the Committee.

In responding, the S151 advised as to why the unusable reserves had increased.  Members noted this accounted for the re-valuation reserve, which reflected movements within asset values. This was not a cash transaction and did not appear in the revenue accounts.  Similarly the pension reserve, which had a significant reduction due to the re-evaluation of assets and liabilities of the fund, which accounted for the largest increase in the useable reserves. A smaller contributor was the capital adjustment account, which reflected the repayment and financing of capital assets.

Members commented on the improving quality of the report, its ease of reading  ...  view the full minutes text for item 36