Agenda item

Consideration was given to the Unaudited Statement of Accounts 2016/17 which had been prepared under the International Financial Reporting Standards based Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting (the Code).

The Committee was presented with the Unaudited Statement of Accounts, which was issued to the Auditor, KPMG on 31 May 2017, for consideration and review, a month earlier than the statutory deadline of 30 June 2017.

The Statutory deadline for the publication of the unaudited Statement of Accounts 2017/18 was being brought forward to 31 May 2018, and the Audited statements to 31 July 2018 (currently 30 September). The Finance team therefore had worked hard over the past few months to achieve this target deadline for the 2016/17 closedown process which had been achieved, providing assurance that the future statutory deadline could be met.

The Audited Statement of Accounts was due to be presented to the Committee for approval on 14 September 2017 after the audit process. Any changes resulting from the External Auditor (KPMG) Audit process, would be highlighted in the September report.

The Statement of Accounts and all supporting documentation would be available for inspection by the electorate from 3 July 2017 to 11 August 2017 by appointment.

The Expenditure Funding Analysis showed a surplus of £0.610m as detailed in section 2.1 of the report which reconciled in the figure declared in the Corporate Policy and Resources.

The Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement (CIES) was mentioned which showed the accounting cost in the year of providing services in accordance with generally accepted accounting practices. The deficit on the Provision of Services totalled £1.134m reconciled through the EFA with the declared surplus of £610,000.

The Cash Flow Statement showed the overall decrease in cash over the year of £1.763m (decrease of £1.075m 2015/16) and showed where this was derived from within the activities within the authority.

The Balance Sheets set out the assets and liabilities of the Council as of the 31 March 2017. The balance sheet showed net assets of just over 4 million pounds which took into account the net pensions liability which was deemed a really positive place to be. The total assets exceeded 43 million, showing we were in a strong position.

The Collection Fund Statement was then highlighted explaining that as a collection authority we collected all council tax and business rates on behalf of other councils as well as ourselves and that this was the account that we took those funds into and showed the distribution from that account. This was reconciled on an annual basis and there was a surplus, it would be reallocated at the end of each year.

Members congratulated Officers on achieving the 31 May target.

Councillor Angela White left the meeting at this point (7:50pm).

Members then asked what the three things were, which were giving the Officers the biggest concern or disappointment.

The Committee was suspended for a few moments to ensure the meeting was still quorate after Councillor White’s departure. The meeting re-started once this was confirmed.

Officers responded to the above query stating that one worry was the pension liability which moved from one year to the next and which needed to be kept under review. The other aspect was that the Council had hoped to have acquired investment properties during 16/17 which continued to be of concern. Another aspect was the level of commercial income that was being built into our financial statements as Officers could not yet be confident that these would be delivered.

Members wanted clarification whether net cash was in line with the budget, enquiring whether it was better or worse.

Officers advised that the Cash Flow statement showed the overall cash in and out of the organisation. Looking at the Balance Sheet at cash and cash equivalents, the figure was just over 7 million at the end of March. It was confirmed that under treasure management rules we did not breach any of our limits that we set ourselves. Overall our investments were 19 million and that compared to the 22 million we had as useable reserve at the bottom of the balance sheet.

Clarification was sought by Members in relation to the Collection Fund Account as there appeared to be quite a disparity in 2015/16 and 2016/17 Provision for Appeals.

In responding, Officers advised that at the end of last year’s year end we had a significant number of speculative appeals. We had about 6 million pounds worth of appeals come in the last 4 weeks of the previous year so we built up the provision in 2015/16 and the analysis of the appeals provision for the year end of this year had shown that we had kept it at that same level so no further contribution was needed to that provision.

A further query was raised in relation to VAT on postages which related to an ongoing court case. It was confirmed that this was yet to be resolved.

RESOLVED that having discussed the Unaudited Statement of Accounts its content be approved and referred to the S151 Officer as recommended.