Agenda item

The Director of Corporate Services provided the committee with an update on the preparation of the Authority’s 2022/23 unaudited financial statements and included the draft core financial statements for information; the Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Account, Movement in Reserves Statement and Balance Sheet.

The Accounts and Audit (amendment) Regulations 2022 came into force on 22 July 2022 and revised the statutory deadline for publishing the audited financial statements to 30 September for 2022/23 accounts and the subsequent 5 years. The deadline for the Authority to produce and publish draft accounts had reverted back to 31 May 2022/23 as per the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015.

At the previous meeting, the Committee was advised that due to changes in the finance teams and delays implementing the new financial system, the Authority sought to produce their draft set of financial statements for 2022/23 by 31 July 2023. At the time the report was written, the Authority had produced a first draft of the financial statements and its quality assurance processes had now commenced.

There was a requirement to obtain certification of the accounts by the Responsible Financial Officer (RFO); for the Authority, this was the Director of Corporate Services. It would be completed by the end of July and the draft statements published on the Authority’s website.

The Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015 applied to the preparation, approval and audit of the Statement of Accounts and other financial statements. The regulations were based on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) which attempted to standardise accounts in a consistent format across both the public and private sectors with the aim of achieving greater transparency. The table in the report summarised the adjustments required to the revenue outturn to reach the Total Comprehensive Income and Expenditure and reported in the financial statements.

The draft Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Account, Movement in Reserves Statement and Balance Sheet were set out Appendix 1. Subject to changes as part of the Quality Assurance Processes, they would form part of the accounts for audit.

It was noted that the Authority now had a reserve balance of £4.5m and in that figure was the quarter share in North West Fire Control. The balance sheet showed the pension reserve left an underlying deficit position, but once that was stripped away, the Service was in a positive position.

The Director of Corporate Services highlighted that all members of the finance team were fairly new to the Service and had carried out an incredible amount of work to make sure the Authority was in a promising position.

Georgia Jones, Audit manager, explained that, to manage expectations, if they received the draft accounts in the upcoming weeks, they would be unable to start work immediately as they would have to manage resources and capacity within the team but assured that the work would be completed as soon as possible.

County Councillor Clarke commented that it had become clear that the unusable reserves on the balance sheet were mainly due to pensions.

County Councillor Singleton asked how confident the finance team were that they could produce the draft financial statements by 31 July and the Director of Corporate service confirmed that they were very confident.

County Councillor Hennessy invited the new officers from the finance team to future meetings of the Audit Committee for the experience, which the Director of Corporate Services agreed.

Resolved: - That the committee noted the update with progress in preparing the unaudited Financial Statements; and noted the Authority’s draft core financial statements that would form part of the 2022/23 unaudited Financial Statements.