 Rha, mae'n mwyfreg yn maes iawn o'r pethau, ac mae'n ceisio mi ni i am rhaid i'u mwyfregionon hwn o arleidio i'ch cysylltu'r honedan. I moeddiu i ni'n cofiniadau i das iddyn nhw o casbl oedd, ac rwy'n cael eu gwneud i'ch cysylltu'n mwyfregion. Mae'n cael ei wneud y cysylltu i fynd i'r gweld yr oedd mwyfregion hwn o gweithfawr yn bobl i'r gen i wneud i'r gweld yr oedd, i'n cael eu gwneud i'ch gweld yr oedd yn mynd i ddweud. The camera follows the microphone being switched on so councillors and officers are advised to wait a couple of seconds before speaking to allow the camera to catch up. Please can those participating in the meeting via the live stream indicate that you wish to speak via the chat column. Please do not use the chat column for any other purposes. 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 the proceedings. Please use a headset when speaking and hold the 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. Speak slowly and clearly and please do not talk over or interrupt anyone. Item 1 on the agenda is Apologies for Absence. Patrick, are there any apologies for absences today please? Yes Chair, we've just got apologies from councillor Jeff Harvey. Thank you very much. Do any members have interests to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting, please would you raise it at that point? No, so if we come to agenda item 3, members we now come to the item 3, the completion of the 2018-19 accounts. May I ask Deputy Head of Finance Fasana to present this item? Thank you Chair. So I'm pleased to inform the committee that the audit of the accounts for 2018-19 have been completed on the 29th of March. The auditors have provided an unqualified opinion and there's further details in their report which is item 4 on the agenda. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the lead project accountant and the team and Ernest Young for working hard and coordinating to complete this audit. The timeline for completion of the 2019-20 accounts. To produce a draft set of accounts we require about 10-12 weeks. This will include producing the statements, the notes to be included in the statement of accounts and the supporting documentation to go with this. EY, thereafter, EY require around about six to eight weeks to carry out their audit and this includes the sampling, testing and investigative work. I can also inform you that EY will be carrying out a walk through testing and this will commence next week for a two week period. Thank you. Any questions from the committee? No? No questions from the committee? Okay. So, thanks to Fazzana for presenting that report. The committee has asked to note that the final accounts were signed off on the 29th of March and an unqualified opinion on the accounts has been issued by the auditors, the time scales for the completion of the accounts for 2019-20. So if I go to agenda item 4, the audit results report from external audits on the 2018-19 accounts. May I ask Janet Dawson to present this report? Thanks very much, Chair. I hope you can hear me clearly. Are you all good? We can. Excellent. Okay. Thank you very much. So you'll find from page 119 of the PAC our final audit results report that sets out all of the detail of the work that we plan to do, the work that we've completed and our findings as a result of that. As we've already reported to the committee, we signed our opinion on the 29th of March and it was an unqualified opinion on the financial statements, but it included an acceptable conclusion on the value for money arrangements relating specifically to the difficulties and weaknesses that the council had been experiencing within the finance function to be able to report on a timely basis. And we have rehearsed a number of those points through the progress of this audit. I think it's important to just to take you from page 124 through the key areas of our findings so that the committee is fully cited on those. So we set out there the significant weaknesses, significant risks that we identified in our planning of the audit and the work and conclusions that we are reporting back to the committee now. So you'll note that on misstatements due to fraud or error, management override of controls, we completed our testing and found no indication of management override of controls. In terms of the focus around incorrect capitalisation of revenue expenditure, again, we've completed our testing and found no indications that that was occurring. In terms of presentation and disclosure of accounting items, this was a significant risk as we started the audit and we did identify significant issues with the treatment of property plant and equipment, which have required a lot of effort from management to revise disclosure notes and also the numbers within the accounts relating to those items. We had identified that the data migration into the new fixed asset register, which took place to support the reporting of 1819, was an area of significant risk. And there were significant deficiencies in the accuracy and completeness of the output of that new fixed asset register for 1819. And again, management has had to do significant work to resolve the issues in the data migration exercise that resulted in a prior year adjustment reflected in the accounts of 6.4 million in the revaluation reserve. And we have made a number of recommendations in section seven of our report about improvements to those arrangements and controls going forward. And then again, we had identified the risk of the implementation of the new financial management system during the same financial year and we had used our IT specialists to look at the migration of data there. So whilst we were comfortable that that data had migrated successfully, we have made a number of recommendations again and those were reported back at the time of the work in 2019. There were some other areas of audit focus that we had in terms of the valuations of other land and buildings and housing assets. And we identified some significant issues in how those valuations have been undertaken and how those are reflected in the draft accounts and those resulted again in significant amount of rework by the council to revise their disclosure in the accounts. The other areas on page 125 included the pension fund liability group accounts preparation, the going concern disclosure and implementation of new accounting standards that took place in 2018-19. And whilst there were some areas that needed a little bit of work, there were no major findings in any of those areas. So I've already talked about the audit adjustments that we've reflected at the bottom of page 125 so that you can understand the significance of the changes from the draft accounts that you saw to this final version. And I have talked already about the qualified conclusion on value for money arrangements and the control observations that we've included in section 7. And I would strongly recommend to the committee that they pay attention to those actions and what the team's response to those is and monitors how those are implemented going forward. That's what I wanted to present on the report. Happy to take any questions. Thank you, Janet. If I can just invite Fazzana to provide a response to the report before we come to the committee members. Fazzana. Thank you, Chair. So in terms of recommendations, we have taken on board what EY have outlined and we have two interim project accountants who are supporting the team to enable us to provide more accurate information. We are providing training to team members to ensure that the work and papers that we provide are of an accurate and complete nature. And there will be an improvement in the evidence that we provide and we are collating and coordinating and planning how to obtain this information and what we are expecting from the team members. In terms of, and this will also heavily invest in investing in the skills that we are, you know, we are investing in time to train our teams of that going forward when we are up to date and we are able to take the process of final accounts ourselves. In terms of the tech one data migration and the FAR, there is a project team within the council now and we do have a dedicated team where the project has to go through a systematic approach. So there is a strategy there and we would have the activities pre and after migration. So, and lastly, the creditors, where there is no reconciliation of the creditors subledger. We are implementing a reconciliation to be carried out monthly and I have spoken with the team on consultants to have their viewpoint from a system perspective. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Williams. Thank you, Chair, and through yourself, if I could just clarify on page, sorry, 126 of your packs and 38 of the document from the external auditors on 156. Okay, 156 in your pack, it's 38 in mine, but there we go. We have the fee analysis. I just want to check on the housing benefits on note 6, I'm assuming that's a typo, it's not £1418.5 pence and that actually it's £14185, so we could clarify that please. The other thing is we do have two estimates on there. Given the work is complete, I'd be expecting Chair for this to be the bill to have been served for them to know. And I'd also like to know if included in these figures is a discount for the inconvenience caused by the external auditors on delays, as was the case in the previous year when they had issued delays themselves. I want to make sure that that has been taken into consideration in the fee calculation and depending on that answer, Chair, I might have a supplement to yourself. I'll let Janet respond, but I'd say the fees will be subject to a PSAA review and buy this council as well as a PSAA and the auditors to come to a conclusion, but I'll let Janet provide detailed response. So, yes, you're right, that is a typo, that should be a comma, not a full stop, so thank you for pointing that out. In terms of the final fees, you'll appreciate that we finalised the audit on the 29th of March and immediately produced this report so that it could come to committee in time for papers. We didn't have time in that few short hours to update the fee analysis and provide you with the final figure because clearly that is something that takes a few hours to investigate, go back through our own systems and identify the information and then analyse it to make sure that it's under the correct headings. We're held very tightly to account by PSAA and it's important that we report that accurately, both to the council and then to PSAA. So we've given you the estimate at the time of completing the audit, you'll appreciate that all of the effort was going into getting the audit done rather than spending time analysing figures. We will turn our attention to that as soon as people are back from holiday, make sure that we've got that analysis right and we'll be providing it to PSAA. I think if you would like to understand how PSAA set the scale fees and determine scale fee variations, they have lots of information on their website which talks about the process that they go through, how they assess those and what they take into account. I don't think that you'll find that they talk about discounts because actually that is against FRC rules. Thank you chair, if I can come back. Yes, I do appreciate the document but my point was you've had nearly two weeks to come back to us with the final figures so I was hopeful that you would have the figures today but it doesn't sound like you do for your own resource issues. The other thing that I would say is on the discount, if that's the case and you can't discount then why did your colleagues do it last year? I can't comment about what you believe my colleagues did last year but I can assure you that they didn't provide a discount on the cost of the audit. Chairman, can I propose that it's looked into and the minutes and you will record Mr Suresh confirming that there was a percentage discount that was advised as committee. So if we could look into that as a council because I feel that's only right and just given the delays that have been the responsibility of Ernest Young. So my beliefs are based on the facts that were given to us at the time. I don't think I've got any other questions other than to say that I think this committee as a whole should endorse these fees going to the PSAA for full review. Agreed. Chairman, if that's a formal proposal I'm happy to second it at the PSAA look at this as a formal review. I mean it's a proposal, I accept the proposal but it's for the committee to agree as well. So the committee takes on board that comment and agrees with it. And any further comments for Janet? So there's no further comments. OK, so the committee is asked to note the report and I thank EY for their attention over the past few months whilst we've reached this conclusion. And hopefully we can now agree and move on in that 10 to 12 week period and get the next years done succinctly on time. OK, agenda item five is matters of topical interest as we only met last week. Chairman, if you recall I asked if some small investigation could be done if we've got any investments or anything at all which could be linked to Russia. I don't know if anything has happened or if there's an update to be made. I'm looking across and I'm assuming there's no update to be made if it's precise in time and therefore we'll hold that over to another meeting. Thank you Chairman. OK, so if there's no further matters of topical interest we'll conclude the meeting. And the date of the next meeting will be held on Thursday 28 July at 10am. And as this is my final event as chair I'd like to thank everybody for their attention and their consideration during the past four years. And thank you to the officers and the council and to EY. Thanks everybody. Thank you chair. Thank you very much Chairman.