 Felly, rhai gwleidio'n gweithio, gyda bobl yn y cyfnod o'r pwblach, o ffwrdd i'r cyfnod ar y bydd yn y roi'r gynhyrch. Felly, rhaid i gweithio'n gweithio'n gyfnod ar y Cyfnod Gweithreif yn y Cymru. Rhywbeth ymlaen i'r cyfnod Cwmysol, Tony Mason, ac rhaid i'r cyfnod y bydd yn y cyfnod. Rydw i'n ffyrdd ymlaen i'r Cyfnodol Cwmysol yn y cwmysol hwn i'r cyfnod, Mae'r ddechrau o gweithio, yn cael y lyfe, yn cael ei bod yn cyd-gwyrddio ar y cwmwysgol. Mae'r cwmwysgol yn cael ei gwasanaeth sydd wedi'i gwahanol, a dda i fynd i gwybod gyda'r bywyd yn gweithio'r cyffredinol i gyd-gwyrddio ar y cyfodol. Dwi'n rwy'n ddiddordeb i'w gwahanol i'r gwaith o'r live stream, rydyn ni'n ddiddorol i'r cyffredinol sydd wedi'i gweithio ar y cwmwysgol. Please do not use a chat column for any other purpose. Make sure that your device is fully charged, and that you switch your microphone off unless you are invited to do otherwise. Please ensure that you have switched off or silenced any other devices you have so that they do not interrupt proceedings. Please use a headset when speaking and hold a microphone close to your mouth. When you are invited to address the meeting, please make sure your microphone is switched on. When you finish addressing the meeting, please turn off your microphone immediately. ychydig sydd frysgol eisiau ei weld yn y ddechrau chi gyd yn cael ei chael i g薗 gweithio. Felly wrthy'r cyfnodd y operator sydd oedd eich cyfrifudd yma i gyd yn cwestiol. Rwy'n dechrau i gyd. Rwy'n dechrau i gyd yn cyfnodd y ddisidliadau. Rwy'n dechrau i gynllunio ar gyfer y ddisidliadau ar gyfer yr ydydd y Cymru'r bergweithio y 19 wrthryn gyfer 21 yn gweithio ar y dyfodol. Mae'r un i'w cwrs phall i'r wyf wedi'u gweld i'r newid yma ar y cyfnodau. Mae'r Ysgrifennu Cywbeth Ysgrifennu Cywbeth yn gweithio gyda'r Ysgrifennu Cywbeth. Mae'r Ysgrifennu Cywbeth yn eich cyfnod. Mae'r Ysgrifennu Cywbeth yn eich cyfnod, mae'r Ysgrifennu Cywbeth yn eich cyfnod, ond o'r eu cyflwchoedd o'r cwmhyslau ein hunain neu'r cwmwyslau hynny ddim yn gweld yn gweld arall. Ty, pa'r hyn o'n gwrs, rydyn ni'n bach o'r cwmhyslau ym Llywodraeth yn y mhwyfyrdd pan fydd yn y 17.5 am yma. Maent yma yma yn 31 yn deallllu, mae'n 15 a'r wrthifftur o'r 14 oed o'r ffrifwyr. I can confirm that, since September 2019, we did employ a full-time equivalent to deal with the account finance process over and above the existing person that we had. After December, we have appointed a chief accountant who will also be involved in the 19-20 accounts closure and audit process. We also have another one-and-a-half FTEs that will also be important. As regards the structure of the finance team, obviously I lead the finance function. There is a chief accountant below me who leads the accounting and budgeting process. We then have three principal accountants who deal with either the general fund, one deals with the general fund, one deals with the housing revenue account, and the third one deals with things like the collection fund and final accounts and things like that. So there are then six people under our general fund accountant, five under our final accounts accountants. We also have a procurement manager and three people under him as well, and they will also have some involvement in the final accounts delivery. That's basically what the structure is. We also then have the two dedicated resources that lead, so they're called James Carter and Tracy Freeman, and their support will be provided to them from other accountants as and when information is required. Before we reach the 19-20 audit, we will be assessing whether we need a further resource to service that audit, but at this stage those discussions are yet to be had. Initial discussion suggests we may need a further half a person possibly, but we'll engage them at the time we need them, which will presumably be January 2022, when the 2019-20 audit is due to commence. So if we need an additional resource to service that audit, we'll make sure we have them in place in time for that process to be completed. That's probably all on that point. Thank you for those figures. If possible, after the meeting, particularly with the structure, if we can maybe have an organisational chart or something circulated, that would be very helpful. Thank you. Do we know how those figures compare to other councils of similar sizes? We've gotten slightly more in our finance team here than my previous authority, but there are one or two functions carried out in finance that we didn't carry out in finance in my previous size. It's a little bit difficult to compare, like with like. To me, they seem about right for the size of council that we've gotten based on my experience, but obviously with the fact that we're behind with the account sources to make sure we see that through so that the two resources that we've got would obviously only be in place until such time as we catch up potentially. We'll get on to comments later. I've had meetings last week with EY alongside Peter to meet the new audit head. We will have their agenda item at the end as part of the AOB. We will go through the agenda items in order and then come back to EY. EY will then come in at that agenda item. We will have an update on progress for the current year audit and input from the committee against that progress. Can members confirm that they're happy to accept the minutes then on that basis? Approved. The committee therefore agrees to improve all the minutes as a correct record. We will now go through the agenda item for audit and governance update. John from online. Yes, General, I am online, yes. Okay, if you can introduce this item. Thank you, Chairman. At the last committee meeting, you recall that it was suggested that it could be good practice to provide an update across the various different areas of governance that the committee considers. So what we thought could be helpful is that we provided a brief overview of progress and where we are on various items and also topical updates. So we provided this document for circulation and hopefully it's fairly self-explanatory and easy to follow. I'm happy to take questions on the contents but also take some feedback on whether that's the sort of thing that you find useful. So, Williams. Thank you. Just one thing on page five, you might want to sort the error out. It says error but not defined on that page. And the other thing was, and I appreciate this is sort of difficult to assess, but on the cases of fraud we've got the type which is very helpful. But I was wondering if there's any indication as to whether it was on purpose or unintentional. Because obviously if it's something that people aren't understanding that they need to do, then that's something that we can maybe assist to reduce those figures. Whereas if it is people doing things on purpose, obviously there's nothing we can put in place to stop people wanting to do that. So just wondering whether, in the way that we're looking at at these cases, if there's a possibility to make such a distinction. Thank you, Chair. So in regards to Corporate Fraud, that falls under me. So obviously when we do a fraud investigation it gets referred to the team and as part of the process of doing the investigation they will assess whether the fraud appears to be a deliberate fraud or whether in fact it was an error or a mistake. So obviously that's taken into account as part of that process. I will say that obviously up until June 2021 things are very difficult for fraud investigation. We weren't really allowed to progress investigations. We weren't allowed to have face-to-face meetings. Our team did actually spend a lot of time between April 2020 and June 2021 on fraud prevention. So I think there's a lot of work we can do on fraud prevention making people aware of the work that we're doing and hopefully as part of that process members of the public will be aware how important it is that they make sure they tell us of circumstances, changes in relation to council tax and things like that. The more we do on fraud prevention, the less likely people are going to end up being investigated for fraud because of a mistake. That's certainly some of the thinking that we're doing at the moment. Councillor Harvey. Yes, thank you Chair. On the same table on page eight, the fraud prevention, I suppose it would be quite interesting to have some sort of metric that gives an order of magnitude of are these attempted frauds that have been detected? What would be the value of, say, if they hadn't been detected? I don't think we can see from here whether we're talking about hundreds of pounds or millions but it would be quite interesting to know. It would be difficult because it's ongoing. Is there anything you can do to indicate an order of magnitude there? Interesting myself from the fraud manager who has been talking about how we measure some of these things because obviously some of the council tax discount type frauds can be quite small. Some of the larger frauds, particularly in relation to right to buy, we're talking about quite large sums of money. We're looking at ways that we can assess the sort of savings that the council's made by detecting that fraud. The team is sort of still in its infancy because the team was set up back in April 2020 and pretty much straight away we had the pandemic so it was quite difficult in getting things off the ground. So we've only really had the fraud team in place, I would suggest, in his current form since December 2020. So we took on two new people. They've both been trained up in the last three to four months to become fraud investigators. So I think it's going to be the next six to nine months. We start to see a lot more coming through, I think, particularly now that we can do cases and progress them properly. Yeah, I mean, certainly we're looking at how we measure the savings that have occurred by detecting fraud and there were sort of nationally recognised ways of coming up with figures. But equally, I think we would probably want to try and make that more on a local basis so we need to have a little bit of a think about how we're going to do that. So yeah, I think that's something we should do. Yes, thank you, through you, Chair. That's interesting and I suppose also there's an interesting moral question there, isn't there, because you could say, well, fraud should be cracked down and stop where it happens. I suppose the other way of looking at it is, would we save more money than the people we employ to track it down? Is there a sort of balance to be struck there? No, it is an interesting point because the team is sort of split 50-50 between prevention and detection. So a lot of the prevention work will be very difficult to say, well, how much money do you save from prevention because obviously prevention is better than cure. I think most people would accept that and then we are putting more resources into that. I'm fairly confident that the team overall would pay for itself, though, in the work that it does. The only comment I had was that there were 24 in the past quarter but we haven't got a comparable before previous quarters just to understand whether there was an ongoing trend in certain areas of these sorts of follow-up on. We have a quarter-by-quarter review across the main areas to see if, especially in the current climate, if there are issues around tax being collected and council tax, that sort of thing. I think on similar lines, I think it would be helpful to see in due course some measure for the processing time for the investigations so that it can be compared on a like-for-like basis over a period of time. I assume that the processing time will vary depending on the complexity and seriousness of the cases but I think over time some sort of metric that shows how well we're doing in terms of processing. I'll have to have a think about how we would do that but I'll study something we could look at. No further comments? The committee, happy to accept this report. Thanks to Jonathan Tully for this report and the committee has noted the report being presented. I'll move on to agenda item five, the Treasury Management. May I ask Peter Maddock to present this item? Thank you, Chair. As part of the potential code, there are a number of reports that need to be issued so there's an annual Treasury report that we produce. There's also a mid-year report that has to be produced and also a Treasury strategy. So this report looks at the year that's ended March, 31st March 2021 and it looks at activity for that financial year. You'll see at paragraph five there's details of the loans that we have with PWLB and we also had loans out with other local authorities. We then had paragraph six have a table of our investments so where our short-term cash has been invested. You'll see there's a paragraph 16. We have a number of loans out to five million with places for people with varying degrees of maturity. There's another table on a more summary table on what our borrowings were and you'll see that at the end of March 2021 it was just short of 250 million. There's a table at 25, for example, which shows the downturn on some of the key areas such as the interest that we paid in the year and the interest that we received and there's a table there showing how our position turned compared to the budget. Although it was fairly close, there were several fairly large swings within categories but overall it was fairly close to what we predicted. Further on there's information about our investment returns and you'll see that, for example, our investment returns have been generally better than the client average and also you've got the weighted average credit risk and again the credit risk has varied from time to time, sometimes below, sometimes above. I don't know whether there's any questions on anything in particular there or the report generally. It's a fairly technical paper but it's just a place for me. Yes, I'm sorry if this is a question coming from a position of ignorance but I just wonder what the units are on the weighted average credit risk and what do those numbers actually mean? I'll probably need to get a bit more detail from my colleague but we're in a benchmarking club with a number of other authorities and there's a formula that you use to arrive at a sort of like a weighted average. Now I'm not sure of the detail of how we get to that but I can certainly find out a bit more on that because obviously at the 31st of March 2020 our weighted credit risk was a bit lower whereas it seems to be a bit higher later on so I probably need to understand a bit more detail behind that but I can provide some more detail on that from my colleague. Councillor Williams. Thank you. Through yourself, Chair, we could find out just looking on page 14 at reference the ice rink. I appreciate much of what goes on with that because it's commercially sensitive but if there's any possible update as to the status of things there and the other question, Chair, is on page 16 in relation to the short term borrowing on the first line, the new debt of £44 million. Sorry, Chair. So short term, from my understanding, is sort of 12 months but quite often it's therefore refinanced so although it's labelled as a short term borrowing it's actually intentional going to be in the long term so just wondering what the plans were for £44 million whether it be refinanced and if so for how long is it for seeing. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. So as regards the ice rink we lent money to the ice rink a couple of years ago. For a while now we've been in discussion with them and negotiations have been ongoing about how we can support them. I wouldn't say anything more I can really say at this stage due to the nature of those discussions but I think we're getting towards a point where we might be able to agree perhaps an extension to the loan or something but that's something that we need to bottom out and I'm hopeful in the next couple of months we'll have something to report. I can confirm that the ice rink has been quite busy so clearly people have gone back to skating including one of my colleagues who couldn't even get in the car park because it was so busy. So there are good signs for the ice rink in the number of people that are going back and the second question. So as at the end of March we had 44 million and these were short term borrowings and the reason for that is that the rate on short term borrowings is extremely competitive compared to long term borrowings we've been talking to our Treasury advisors over a period of time their view still is that the strategy should be to borrow short term but because the money that we've borrowed is in support of longer term assets such as Irmin Street or some of the properties we've purchased on the Science Park we will at some stage move to longer term borrowing and it's just a case of assessing at what time that will be the right what time will be the right time and what time would make financial sense for the Council really. What's the risk assessment on that? If there was a liquidity crisis given that there's a Chinese investor company that's 300 billion in debt and goes hits the wall what happens if there's a repeat of 2008 and there's a liquidity crisis and we've got short term loans what happens? Well as I say we're talking to our Treasury advisors at the moment to assess whether we go I mean I think based on conversations we've had and based on their advice we believe that's the best thing to do at this stage I mean it's always very difficult to predict what's going to happen in the future we obviously never thought that Covid was going to come along and we never thought so it is a difficult balancing act and we do talk on a regular basis to make sure that we're in the best thing for the Council certainly at the moment the interest rates on short term borrowing is significantly less than long term borrowing and I'm talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds in a year so I cannot I cannot see based on the information I have since at the moment but I totally agree at some point that we are going to have to go and we just need to make sure that's the right time Thank you Chair more of a comment than a question just that I think I can understand why there was some concern expressed Chair on your place at this I also agree that the way that the interest rates are at the moment between short and long term borrowing is something that I don't think any of us would say make any sense at present because it's been long history that long term borrowing rates would be lower such as mortgages etc rather than the short term however for some reason it seems the other way round at the moment what may help is so you could from reading this look short term borrowing that debt going to be paid off in 12 months you could unintentionally make that assumption it may be helpful for us to be able to see when the terms of that loan expires for what period it is and if the plan is to be refinancing in how much will be refinancing because it could be misinterpreting your question Chair but I think we are along the same lines as the concern is if we get to the end of the loan period and refinance it then we have to pay it so which might be okay in one instance and we might want to keep more of an iron at another so we perhaps need more information to assess this risk as an audit committee if you're a agreeable Chair yeah I think it's again it's looking at we are getting professional advice we're getting professional advisors there were professional advisors in 2008 who said it was all going to be fine and the world didn't so reality can come back and bite us and I'm sure people were being advised to go and put their money into Icelandic banks because it was fine and it went wrong so we have to take professional advice from the professionals but also assess it in light of potential risks yes it's cheaper in the short term to get short term borrowing but actually are we taking on additional risk ourselves that is in excess of what we should be doing I think you're right we need to have a view of the cost of that long term versus short term borrowing an assessment from our advisors as to why they see why they say it's still appropriate to keep it short term borrowing on long term assets given the potential as we come out of Covid for markets to change quite rapidly yes thanks I think that's a good point I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure yes thanks chair I think that's a good point I'm talking to the crisis next month and I can get some information Towson Harvey yes thank you chair I just wondered if you could sort of just talk through in section 6 under investments so the south cams limited balance is 71 million I think so is that sort of including within that investment cash that's awaiting investment and then is the interest accrued which is roughly 0.7% is that a sort of net if you like effectively income generated within south cams minus the cost of what we charge I just I wonder if you could explain how those numbers have derived so we have 84 million with south cams limited at the end of March and the loans are made as and when a purchase is agreed so we'll get a notification that a purchase is due but we usually get 3-4 weeks notice so we can manage our short term cash in such a way so that the money is available so accrued interest would have been interest that they owed the council as at the end of 31st of March it looks to me to be a couple of months a month and a half I'm not exactly sure how much what period that interest relates to but that would have then been paid to us early in 2021-22 okay thank you councillor Leans thank you it was just back on figures on page 16 I think what you've asked for and seeing the advice I think would be would be a good thing for the audit committee to look at from the governance and the risk assessing but I think also to have some idea of how long we foresee to be holding this debt for and when do we think we will be paying it and what are the sort of how are we going to phase our way out are we refinancing the full full 44 are we coming down and things like that what are we planning to do and if so how long because I think it's something that the committee made chair that if it's something that we thought we're going to refinance it for a couple of years probably less concerned and if it was say over 20 or 50 years because you're the risk of changing the markets over a longer period is more more of an issue so as regards the 44 million I'm trying to remember off the top of my head but it's I think it's about five charges or six charges of various loans with various maturity rates in fact I think some of it matures next month so we will be talking to our Treasury advisors very shortly in fact it's probably something we'll raise in the next meeting as to whether we because potentially the bias may be that perhaps we do start to go along on that first five million so yeah and I think I'm feeling the next one is due probably January, February so we hope it's sort of staggered over and that's a sample thank you chair it's when I read these reports I often reflect on what is the message that we should be passing on to residents and to parish councils so I wondered if you could sort of summarise your view of the health of our finances compared to last year and the risk in a few sentences yeah so you'll see that the majority of our borrowing is with the PwW at the time when that was taken out in 2012 there was a 30 year business plan that was assessed as that was we could service that loan over the long term the 30 year business plan is updated on a regular basis just to check that things are still panning out as we expected which is still the case with you to have another 30 year business plan produced fairly shortly to see how things are going it does demonstrate the difference in long term some short term rates quite clearly there now the short term borrowing has mainly been for our capital program which is in relation to investments we've purchased and indeed industry so again the loans that we've taken out are again longer term assets which particularly on housing okay we don't know where house prices are going to go but it's certainly in my view a fairly sound investment and you think that property prices will continue to go up over the long term so I don't think we've taken out loans against assets that shouldn't mean that the loan by assets I don't you know we can only take out borrowing for long term long term purchases we would whilst we would have a little bit of short term cash cash flow borrowing generally any borrowing that we would take out will be for long term assets so that you know that you can pay off that money when you hold that asset if at some stage we decide we need to sell that assets we hopefully get more money than we've got in borrowing so I mean my view would be for an authority this size that bonds are not overly overly significant the HRA you know is a very big chunk but there is a clear business case behind that given that that was brought in to replace an old system where we were paying money direct to central government it's fairly you know that it's fairly secure in the long term we have a plan in which to pay out off those loans as and when income comes in and our HRA plan I think shows substantial surfaces in future years as rents go up and obviously the interest rates are pretty much fixed so our income is growing faster than our interest payments so in terms of those particular loans you know we've got how that's dealt with and again on the general fund I mean I would particularly point to her mystery as being you know we get substantial interest from that organisation that far exceeds the interest that we're paying so yeah I mean my view would be was we're in a healthy state and the borrowings that we have are not overburden in relation to the finance of the council. It may be a question for council audience I don't know but do we have a figure for the yield that we have on our assets? I mean in relation to interesting in relation to our investment properties what the figure is I think the net budget we've got is just over four million at the moment in terms of income that we're achieving from those purchases after management costs so what's the yield on the asset value of the yield? I haven't got the information into that and certainly deep down we've got an average rate of 3.51 as the cost of those loans against the assets I would expect us to get a yield of getting up to 70% I mean certainly our market value of our adequacy with the yield I think it would be useful when looking at the treasury loans that we're drawing out that we have the yield the value of the assets that we're loaning them against so that we can see overall what potential net gain is compared to the council loans. I'm just going to say that perhaps that might be something quite difficult to have up in here and now perhaps it may be a piece of work that can be done for our next meeting chair Thanks to Peter Maddock for the report the committee has asked to approve the treasury management annual report but also the committee requests that there's some further guidance provided from our advisors for the short term loans and also a view on the yield of the assets against the loan rate so that we can see the net gain at the next meeting so we move on to item 6 matters of topical interest this is an opportunity for the committee to discuss matters of topical interest and we've added two reports that will arise from the audit of the 2018-19 accounts so you can please add on your head of external audit either this is Jackson I don't think that's a little Janet Janet Dawson that request EY to present their report Thanks chair and good morning everybody I'm Janet Dawson Apologies for the confusion originally Elizabeth Jackson was going to take over from Suresh however given the situation that the audit for 18-19 is in and the significance of the delays that we've been experiencing to be able to close out the audit I've stepped in I'm the partner who leads our Government and Public Services practice for EY we've put a report together for you to set out the key areas that are still outstanding at the time of writing and I am pleased to say that there has been an element of progress in the last fortnight having prepared this report however I am so concerned about the difficulties that the organisation is experiencing to be able to provide the final pieces of information that we need that I wanted just to set out to you the next steps that I can consider taking to reflect on the issues that as I say the counciller is experiencing so you'll see in the second part of the report the key issues that were discussed I believe in July with Suresh but on the first page what I've highlighted to you is our responsibilities under the National Audit Office code of audit practice which changed for 2020 and what that requires me to do is consider now in this current reporting cycle for 2021 whether or not I think there are significant weaknesses in the arrangements within the organisation and in particular to do with the ability to report the position financially if I do feel that there are significant weaknesses there then I have to consider whether or not I need to invoke my special powers and report those to you and potentially to escalate those through preparing statutory recommendations now what those would do would be to report to the council to full council and expect a response within 30 days as to what actions the organisation is going to take on the first page the key areas where I am concerned there is a significant weakness within the organisation which is around the capacity and capability of offices within the finance function to adequately address issues technical accounting queries in support of the audit in a timely manner and the ability to prioritise resources to be able to deal with that to get the financial statements reported and the third area is whether or not the governance arrangements are sufficiently robust to ensure that this these weaknesses are addressed the reason that I focus on this is because it's 12 months now since we started the audit and we raised these issues on the first week of the audit that there was an issue around reconciliation of the financial statements the underlying general ledger and the new fixed asset register and we still have not yet resolved that so I do believe that there is a key issue here and our purpose as your auditors is not to help you do that and work through it with you over a year it's actually to say okay we need to call this out now and that's the purpose of the report so I'll stop there and happy to take any questions Mark also is on the call and has the detail behind a lot of this a lot of this thank you chair if three yourself if I could ask some questions about our external auditors so first of all it says that you are considering and yet in your introduction of the report it seemed a bit more final like you were going to use your powers so it would be very good to understand if that is going to happen or not so that things can be organised going forward the other thing I wanted to ask was we have had issues of resources from EY as well throughout this process and I'm wondering if you can give us some clarification as to when you think the 2020 audit might be complete and if you could confirm if you have the resources in place I understand it's meant to be in the summer of 2022 but can you confirm if we're going to meet that deadline in your eyes and also when would you think is a reasonable time on which we will be caught up and start reporting our accounts on time thank you chair so those are all good questions we had a discussion this morning about the progress that's being made and I have a reluctance Councillor Williams to provide yet more leeway before I invoke my special powers because what we've seen over the last period of months is information being promised and then that deadline being missed however we have made some progress in the last week and I'm therefore prepared to give it another two weeks to see whether or not the information that we have been promised comes through by then if it doesn't then I will move to considering using my special powers now I say it and that's the terminology required by the regulation so until I invoke my special powers I am only considering doing so I'm going to give it another fortnight and if we don't have what we've been promised at that point then I will consider more formally and prepare a report and discuss with management on the point on resources I am very well aware that we had some difficulties in completing the 1718 audit both because of the issues at the council and because of resourcing pressures within EY now I run the team of 250 specialist auditors that we employ nationally and the issue at this stage is not our resourcing at all the issue is that we are unable to plan effectively because we're not receiving information that we require when we're promised it so if we can move to a position where the council can provide us with the closed out accounts, a team that can support the audit process and that they understand what's in there and can move efficiently through supporting us then we will provide the resources obviously South Cams is sitting in a position where every time we miss it has a knock-on impact into all of our other resourcing that we have planned for other organisations but we're committed to getting this done and my key concern is not my ability to match resources to you, it's your ability to provide the information to us when it's been promised so the summer of next year, I'm not quite sure which set of accounts we'll be looking at at that point I would like to be moving into the 2122 accounts to your point about catching up however I'm concerned that the report in front of you states it will take another couple of months to close out 1819 and then another month to prepare 1920 and then some more time to prepare 2021 and therefore we will have to come in once you are ready so to clarify you're looking to get things caught up and in the summer been doing the 21 accounts is that what you've just said because that does seem like a lot of accounts to get through between now and then it's a huge amount of work to get through but it's a huge amount of work to get through from the council's perspective which is where my concern about the capability and capacity of the finance function comes in and it's a question of whether or not the organisation is committed to doing that or not so there's two weeks on these 2019 accounts so from what you're saying your expectations are to be caught up by the summer does that mean that even if the responses in these two weeks that you may be considering to use your powers if we've not caught up the 22 accounts by the summer would that be a fair assessment of your comments I didn't quite follow your point Councillor Williams but if it is that we don't make it within the next month to complete 1819 then my concern is that the organisation will continue to move further to the right in terms of the time scale it really depends on how much work is put in to close out the accounts for the years that are laid and then we will match resource to it and if that happens then we will be able to be caught up by the end of next summer these audits shouldn't take particularly long that's the thing however a year has passed if I can clarify chair my question my question was because you've said about the 22 accounts for the summer whether even if in this two weeks you're giving the information and within the month so 19 accounts are concerned is it a consequence that if we are not in place by the summer of 2022 with those accounts that you will be considering taking this action on the 2020 or 2021 accounts or will you be permitting more time if needed or are we facing the same consequence if the accounts aren't caught up by the summer so the point of reporting at this stage is because and exercising special powers is because of my concern that action is not being taken if we can move through that and I don't feel that I need to use my special powers then I will still be reporting that there are weaknesses in the process however they may not be significant weaknesses at this point it will be a question of what response is the council taking to catching itself up and if we can see focus and investment in resources real application to get through this backlog by the council then we'll be delighted and we'll be working closely with you to do that and therefore I would not need to exercise my special powers however I will be reporting regularly on the progress being made council sample thanks chair you mentioned from your meetings with Southcams officers on the 18-19 accounts how confident are you or do you have a view of how confident you are regarding the council's ability to complete this work within the two week period well you have to remember that I'm new into this and therefore I've been told that it can be done and therefore I expect that it will be done Mark may have a different view in terms of confidence because he's been here for a year and he's been told this before so I'm ever the optimist and ever the positive however history is not a very strong indicator of achieving this that's my concern yeah and I think I just add in there with that I suppose that history so the information we've got from officers to date about the outstanding issues and clearing down those issues is within the two week time frame is doable I'm sure Peter will attest is linked to the use of specialists outside of the organisation so there's making sure that the council liaise with their valuation specialist to get the turnaround that they need to get the final answers and therefore to be able to update the accounts as appropriate for that but history has shown as Janet alludes to that we've had promises before which have slipped for one reason or another but currently what is in place seems doable I believe it's down to the council to therefore deliver it I mean I think if I can step in this reiterates the comments that we made at the last order committee meeting about there being sufficient resource in place and a concern that I have is that from EY getting information that they haven't got all of the evidence that they need to complete the audit at this moment whereas in the report we're being told that they do have all the information so there's a gap between what we believe we've provided and what EY believe they need that we don't seem able to square that circle and EY are challenging the organisation to come up with the resource that we've also challenged the organisation with in the past year to deliver the audit on time so the 2021 accounts can only be delivered if we get the resource in place to deliver the 1819 and then that rolls through to the 1920 to the 2021 we can only keep on repeating the same things again as an audit committee to chair the audit committee to this organisation to get the resources in place to prioritise it and to deliver the audit aligned with the EY requirements we can't say anything clearer than that unfortunately if we cannot move this organisation then EY will have to move this organisation for this audit committee that's the situation that we are now in that it will get taken out of the hands of the audit committee and given to council to be there Peter ychwaneg Cynllun oherwydd I hadn't been given the I hadn't been given the hadn't been suggested to me that we would be able to catch up by 2021 by summer of 2022 I am more than happy to get the resources in place to make sure we do if that's the commitment of EY to support us in reaching that target I'm more than happy to get whatever resources we need in order to achieve that does sound extremely optimistic and challenging but nevertheless when I was brought into this authority the key target I was given was to get things up to date and I am I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens I accept that things have not gone well and clearly part of that has to rest in my land but I will do everything that we can to get up to date and if we have commitment from ourselves and commitment from EY to work together to achieve that target then I am up for that and I'm sure members here are also up for that In that spirit chair I'm going to do the old broken record I think the toolkit for effectiveness of the audit committee is probably best that we do our bit and if we can you know look at that as well because that might give us some help as a committee as to how we can be the most effective I've asked for it time and time again hopefully it's umptein for time lucky Celfs a sample I'd just like to pick up on the again this two week what needs to be done in the next two weeks I'm concerned by the answer that everything seems possible but it may not be possible that there's still some level of concern that we may not be able to reach a target that's within two weeks of this meeting I just want to understand a bit more about why we're not in a position now to firmly commit to delivering on that, what are the variables that mean we're unable to do that today for a delivery deadline that's two weeks away I mean I think the key issue probably is getting the information when I was when I get to my report one of the issues is we need to do some site inspections on 15 pieces of land which is going to be carried out later this week we will need to pass that information to the auditor after the valuer who will then make an assessment of whether there's a changing value required on those pieces of land that information will need to be put into the asset register if necessary and we will then need to update the accounting statement for those changes now I would think we're a fair wind we should be able to do that within two weeks but we are in the hands of the valuer he is doing his work and as we speak a couple of days so I'd sort of agree with Mark it's doable but there are a number of risk factors in saying that subject to the valuer in time and subject to completing the pieces of work I believe Mark now has everything he needs apart from the information from the valuer is that correct not only correct so there's three as per our report and I think obviously Peter addresses in his cover paper there are three areas in regards to property, plant and equipment outstanding so there's the work on the nil value surplus assets which Peter's referring to which is what's linked to the external valuer performing a valuation of a proportion of those to ensure obviously the values of the material stated correctly in the counts there's also an element of opening balance work still outstanding in regards to the revaluation reserve and the split of accounting entries between the revaluation reserve and the comprehensive income and expenditure statement so we've had some progress on that but the council are currently pulling together a I guess a more up to date document about where we sit with that because the council are proposing a prior period adjustment to the 2017-18 account balances we need to ensure we've got enough evidence to support that PPA that prior period adjustment is correct because it's material and therefore we can't just just go back and update prior year figures without insuring we're getting the correct position so we're currently waiting for an updated paper from the council on that back of that we'll need to assess if we need any further evidence to get to that position where we're assured that any PPA is appropriate and then the third stream is getting a final version of the fixed asset register that reconciles to an updated statement of accounts notes now that can't be done in totality at the moment because it depends on the first two points being completed so that'll be the final stage so we are still waiting for information of the council in those three areas but EY have resource ready, willing, able for the next two weeks to work on any information provided by Peter and his team yes EY any further comments from the committee? okay if the committee is accepting of this I would like to have a meeting with Peter and EY on a bi-daily basis that's every two days not twice a day to have an update on progress for the next two weeks that's Williams chair if you could then circulate for other members of the committee to know or at least for myself I'd appreciate that yep bi-daily be acceptable or would you like to put any extra work on you when you've got enough work to be getting on with okay is that okay for EY yep it's not going to be a long meeting that's going to catch up on a bi-daily basis every two days for the next two weeks and I'll provide an update for progress post that meeting to the members of the committee no further comments? okay thank you everybody thank you EY it's scheduled for Wednesday 1 December at 10am following the discussion we just had I'll provide updates on a regular basis in the next two weeks and be in contact with Peter and EY thank you everybody