The Senior Finance Manager (Client) introduced his report setting out the unaudited Statement of Accounts for 2020/21 and the External Auditor’s risk assessment document.  It was noted that:

·  The Statement would be subject to external audit, scheduled to commence on 23 August 2021, prior to it being brought back for formal approval in September 2021.

·  The headline messages from the Statement of Accounts could be summarised as follows:

There has been an increase in the value of Property, Plant and Equipment held on the Balance Sheet following the acquisition of a number of houses for housing temporarily homeless families, together with the costs of refurbishing the Lockmeadow Complex which was acquired in 2019.  There had also been significant spend on a number of ongoing developments – the Innovation Centre and the housing developments at Brunswick Street and Union Street.

Short-Term creditors had increased which primarily reflected grants received by the Council from Central Government to pay over to businesses and individuals adversely affected by the impact of COVID-19.

Other Long-Term Liabilities had increased significantly, reflecting the annual remeasurement of the Pension Fund liability.

The items above were also reflected in movements within the Usable and Unusable reserves.  Within the Usable Reserves a new earmarked reserve of £13.5m had been established to provide funding for future Collection Fund deficits which were now forecast because of the financial impact of COVID-19.

In response to questions, Mr Paul Dossett of Grant Thornton, the External Auditor, explained that:

·  In terms of assessing the competence of the actuary that carried out the Council’s Pension Fund valuation, PWC’s report as an auditor’s expert advised Grant Thornton as the auditors on matters pertaining to the individual actuaries and was quite high level.

·  Revaluations were done by the actuary firms not by the auditors who audited those numbers.  Based on their experience of looking at 2020/21 accounts across the country and with the different actuarial firms, Grant Thornton had seen an increase in net pension liabilities everywhere for this year.

RESOLVED:

1.  That the unaudited Statement of Accounts for 2020/21, attached as Appendix 1 to the report of the Senior Finance Manager (Client), be noted.

2.  That the External Auditor’s risk assessment document, attached as Appendix 2 to the report of the Senior Finance Manager (Client), be noted.