 Gweld Fawr, rydych chi cyflwydd y gwaith yn y mynd i'r fawr i'ch gweithwyr flwyddiadau ar y cyflwydd i fewn. Efallai hi'n gweithwyr ar yr Seifeidwyr Gw semflaesu i chi fod iawn o fawr pan fawr o y gallu Fawr Gwenedig. Ydych chi'n rhoi, fel Ymarhwnd, Ayun Michael Atkins, a wnaeth yr ydych chi ar gweithwyr. Ymlaesu iweithwyr i'r plwyddiadau pa'r safadau, ac yr ydych chi'n rhaid i'r llwyddiadau am y cyflwydd. Nghymruwn i ymdyn nhw'n storffiad sydd yn ddiwedd i gyflwyno'r gyfer gilydd y Cymru, felly nid yw hynny'n ddod ai'n ddîm i'ch ffisio'r cwerthau i chi i gychwyn gynllaeth y bodai'r cyw sefydliadau sy'n dod i fan yn eu cydwyr. A'r lleoli'r gofyn yn y kochogol. Erbyn y cyfwyr cymorth, paneddech chi'n meddwl i'n meddwl? Fel hynny'n meddwl i gyfwyr cymorth i gyfwyr hawlyn Llemen gwestiwyr Helon, yn ei wneud am yda'r cyfwyr. Thank you very much, and thank you for joining us, Helen. I hope you're not feeling too rubbish. Item two is declarations of interest. Do any members have any interests to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If it becomes a parent-relation meeting, please raise it at that point. I'll go to Councillor Heather Williams first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. The greater heritage partnership is mentioned on the member of the Assembly. Thank you, House Heather Williams, Councillor Registo Bartz. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to remind the committee that I'm a director on the board of South Cambridgeshire Investment Partnership, and also South Cambridgeshire Projects. Thank you, Councillor Stobart, and Councillor Samford. Thank you, Chair. Just my usual declaration as a non-remunerate director of South Cams Limited Trading as Urban Street Housing. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Samford. Councillor Howell. Thank you, Chairman. Chairman. The County Council pop up view there and everywhere, and I am a member of the County Council. Thank you, Councillor Howell. Item three, minutes of the previous meeting. Do members have any amendments related to the accuracy of the minutes of the meeting held on 28 November 2023? I see none. I'll move approval of these minutes as a true and accurate record. Can I see those in favour, please? Thank you. The committee therefore agrees approval of the minutes as a true and accurate record, and I'll sign them after the meeting. Item four is public questions. We have not received any public questions. So item five, the first substantive item, is the annual governance statement and local code of conduct. Please can Mr Tully present this report. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman, and good morning to all members of the committee. We're starting off on page nine of your agenda packs today, looking at the annual governance statement and the local code of governance. So by way of introduction, the accounts and audio regulations require the council to review our governance arrangements and prepare a document called the annual governance statement to accompany the statement of accounts. The purpose of the annual governance statement, which I might refer to as the acronym AGS from time to time, is to communicate how we're complying with our local code of governance. Now the AGS itself starts on page 138 of the agenda packs because it's part of the statement of accounts. I hope you don't mind jumping around, but it saves hopefully a few trees of bits of paper rather than printing it off a second time. So the AGS itself, it should reflect governance sort of matters from the relevant financial year, and we're looking at 2021-2022, but also plus up to dates where the accounts are signed as a final document. So the previous sort of final AGS as part of the statement of accounts was I suppose approved in November last year, so it's not consequently a lot of change to our governance arrangements between those two time periods. However, despite that short period, it's a great opportunity to still look back at what's happened in the financial year, and we do that through a section of the document called the review of effectiveness. So also I suppose what I'd highlight is that any sort of material changes which happen between now and the conclusion of the statement of accounts may need to be updated and recorded if relevant. So, for example, on that, if you see in the document, we refer to both the best value notice and also the coronavirus to big events which are sort of spanning a larger time period. So it's just worth setting that context of the AGS because it's from 2021-2022 up to current date. So it's on pages 138-153 of the PACs, and we have it as a separate agenda item because the regulations require that the committee have to approve in advance of the statement accounts. So that just provides a little bit of clarity rather than losing it in that document. So with your approval, we can progress with the statement of accounts. Now, one other thing I'd probably like to highlight is just the external audit, and I sort of focus on that in paragraph 18 on page 11 of the PACs, because the document hopefully should be reviewed by the external auditors as part of their value for money work. But obviously we've got a current backlog, which I refer to in the reports, so we're just going to have to wait and see how that progresses in terms of timing. I think we probably are still expecting a final report in some formats, so that will give us an opportunity to conclude on the final version of the AGS at a later date, and I'll just highlight it early on. Should something material happen between today and that point, we'd want to include it and inform the committee, and if it was a major change, we'd bring it back to the committee again just to make sure you're aware of it. So looking at the AGS itself, if I can direct you to page 138 of your PACs, where we're actually in the statement of accounts, just key points I'd like to typically bring out in the AGS for the committee's awareness. On page 142, we have roles and responsibilities, no significant change, but that sets the structure and the key governance arrangements for the organisation. On page 146, this is where we include a section called challenges to local authority governance, and this is where I mentioned just a few moments ago we've got items which span multiple years. On page 148, that's the review of effectiveness, and that's our reflection upon what sort of happened on the 2021-2022 financial year, where we've had challenges in governance and also some positive highlights as well, because it's good to reflect where we've got assurance that governance is working well. And then finally in the document it takes us to page 149, where we have a conclusion at the end of the documents. So then just moving on from that, I would bring you back to beginning to the covering reports, sort of page 15. We have the local code of governance, so this is a document which is continually updated and reviewed, it's sort of reviewed in real time, but we like to bring it back to the committee with the annual governance statement, because it's just a good periodic check-in, you have an opportunity to have a look at it. So that's good, that makes it sort of a two-way process of keeping it updated. It's on page 15 of your packs. What I like to do in this version, not the one that goes on the website, but I like to include track changes just so the committee can see at a glance what's changed from the previous one. And also taking on board your feedback, I think from the previous time we reviewed this, we've added a version control to the end of document and that's on sort of page 33. And one thing I would like to promote as part of it on page 32 on the previous page, we have the seven principles of public life. Again, no changes, but I think it's just really helpful for the committee to recognise that in there, it's very good practice. So in summary, the previous version of AGS only recently approved as part of the financial accounts, but for clarity, members have to approve the version in advance, the statement accounts, because we've got draft come today, it made sense to bring it along with that. And we've also got some updates to local code governance, so that's the summary. Happy for comments or questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Tully. Are there any questions or comments that members wish to make? I think Councillor Heather Williams is slightly ahead of me. I beg your pardon, Councillor Williams, I didn't see your hand there. It was any slight, so I'll forgive you, Chair. Page 21, I can see, and thank you for the track change so that I've asked you in the past, it does make it a lot more clear for us when comparing. We've removed the constitution on the right hand side. I'm just wondering, that's something that we would, I don't see quite on some why we've removed that, so if you could help us with that, please. Terrible, sorry. Thank you for the question. I think it's not that we've removed the constitution as such in terms of the overall document, it was in terms of trying to align the text on the left hand side to the evidence on the right hand side, and I think the example there wasn't wholly relevant. It was sort of a better example, so that's just a bit of a tweak there. But yeah, the constitution is still very much a live document, which of course has many different parts. Thank you. I will now turn to Councillor Stobart. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So it's really a series for me, it's a series of questions and comments. If I might start on page 12 with the table in paragraph 23, I was just a little confused about the middle entry on coding. There's a lot of abuse of the word code in this entry, and I was a little confused by it, but coding documents is that giving an identity to a version, for example. And I wondered if it might more accurately say this will help us to maintain the accuracy of information within the code. So that was my first comment, and then I just had a series of, I suppose it was textual and just slight small things in the body under principle B page 20. The Joint Planning Committee might be better called the Joint Development Control Committee to give it its proper title. Just over the page on item 6, this doesn't have to be exhaustive. There are all sorts of ways the council engages, and some of that is feedback through members. We're meeting parish councils and so on. I think as far as the formal and regular forms of engagement, that seems to be quite accurate. But there are others. On page 23, the medium term financial strategy is hugely important. The strategy is reviewed annually, but I wondered if we might add to that by, and there's a kind of a governance process associated with that, but because of the significance of the medium term financial strategy, perhaps we should be a little more explicit with that. So there were my just comments from a read-through of kind of accuracy and text. Thank you, councillor. So Mark, there sounded like some very helpful suggestions. Is there anything you want to pick up directly, Mr Tony, or will you just make those amendments for the final version? Thank you. Great observations. Really value the input of the committee on this. It's really helpful. I'll make those tweaks to the latter two points with the NTS. We can definitely talk about that in a bit more detail in the document. I'll just take the opportunity I've made to come back to the first question about the coding. You're right. I apologise. There's a lot of use of the word codes in the document. It can get quite confusing, but it might be held for assurance to the committee what we're doing in the background, because it's a word document full of lots of information. It can be a bit of a challenge to stay on top of it and make sure all the documents are being kept up to date. So we're just doing a little bit of work in the backgrounds. We're using SharePoint just to sort of identify and map all these documents. It's helping us stay on top of it. It's giving us a little bit of assurance that the documents within the code of governance are up to date. So it's helping us without assurance mapping process. So that's why we're coding the documents just so we can easily map them back and keep track of them. But I'll note your point about the language. Maybe I'll try and prove on that next time. Thanks. So just a small follow-up through you, Chair. So it's a kind of a version control, as I understand it, and there's a kind of version list at the end of the document, isn't there? And I was wondering, you think you might slip into 1.0 and 1.2 and so on. But I think the date working by date is probably adequate in this case. And from what you've said, Mr Tully, appears then that we could actually reconstruct the document going back if we needed to. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Stobart. Just one question from me, if I may, just kind of stepping back a little from the detail of it. Now traditionally, a kind of a timely and kind of comprehensive external audit would be seen as a pretty important pillar of our governance and the assurance that we can have over it. Obviously it's not been timely for a number of years and in fact it may now, you know, there may now be some audits which are not perhaps comprehensive either. Are you confident? I guess a consequence of that is that perhaps we're going to be placing more weight on sort of other pillars of our governance and other forms of getting assurance. Are you nevertheless comfortable that, as you've stated here, that we can have a reasonable level of assurance over the governance practices of the council and that there are not kind of undue risks that we need to be aware of? I think so, yeah. I mean, the external audit is important but it's just one component. There are lots of other sources of assurances as well. I mean, normally in the AGS you will say, I forget which page it is, but under the external assurance that just one small section, there's lots of other sources of assurance. So as I said at the beginning also we need to look at the progress of what's happening with the external audit. I still think they're doing some value for money work as well but we'll obviously keep the committee appraising updated on how that's going. Thank you. Hopefully it's a short term issue in any case but just for this period it does feel like we're slightly leaning more on other pillars than we might otherwise be. Thank you. If there are no other comments or questions from members of the committee, we've been asked to approve the annual governance statement. Can we agree that by affirmation? Thank you very much. The recommendation is agreed. So we'll move to agenda item six. Thank you, Mr Tully. Move to item six, which is the draft accounts for the financial year 2021-22. The draft accounts are being submitted to the committee for approval. Mr Maddock has prepared a report to go alongside these and he will present that now. Thank you, Mr Maddock. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning everyone. So we have on the agenda today the draft accounts for 2021-22 and as the chair said it's presented for approval of this meeting. We are also now starting on the draft accounts for 2022-23 and the proposal is that they will be completed by the end of March. What isn't clear is whether these accounts will be subject to full audit or any audit or what, but at the moment the expectation is that there will be a backstop date, which is what they refer to as the date where the years that are behind need to be caught up. So that date is likely to be set at the 30th of September 2024. So the thinking is by that date all work will be completed on 2021-22 and 2022-23. We're not quite sure what that work will actually be. Following that the 23-24 accounts will be created during spring and summer and potentially they will be subject to audit by our new auditors KPMG from September although they may well need to do additional work to provide themselves with the assurance they need to then do a full audit on 23-24. So that's by way of an introduction and I've just noticed recommendation 5. I've said that the change of auditor for 23-24 and the following five years of course 23-24 is one of those five years so it really means it should be 23-24 and the following four years. So the accounts themselves are reproduced as an appendix to the report. There's a little bit of commentary on some of the key items within those accounts which I wasn't actually going to propose to go through unless members would like me to. But the main statements of accounts are reproduced on page 55 which is a comprehensive income and expenditure statement on page 56 which is a moving to reserve statement. 57 the balance sheet and 58 the cash flow statement so those are all four core statements that all councils will need to produce in their accounts. There are a number of other statements within the accounts so for example we'll have a housing revenue account because we're a housing authority and because we're a billing and collection authority we also have a collection fund and there are various notes around those accounts. So I don't know whether it's worth stopping at that point and seeing whether there's any questions in relation to the accounts themselves before I move on to the cash up process in a bit more detail. Yes I think that might be sensible. I mean perhaps since you introduced it first perhaps actually we could talk about the cash up process first and then we'll go into the thinking of the accounts if members are happy with that approach. So Mr Maddox given an overview there of the situation where we are so clearly these accounts we're going to approve the draft accounts today which would normally then of course be the trigger for further audit work because I understand that's not currently. There's currently nothing scheduled in or planned. Is that correct? So at the moment there isn't anything scheduled in. We are having a meeting with EY on the 30th which is a week today to discuss with them what they're thinking is at this stage. Conversations with them so far suggested that they're not planning to do a full audit. I think like everyone they're waiting to see what the announcement will actually be and whilst we've had some reasonably clear indications that this completion date of the 30th of September 2024 will be set. I think it probably needs primary legislation which again will take time. So time is ticking and the date's not moving so there's even going to be less and less time to carry out any work on both the two outstanding years between now and the 30th of September. So what I'll do is after I've had the meeting with EY next Tuesday I'll feed back to the committee what comes out of that meeting. I'm hoping we'll get something a little bit more concrete than we've had so far but I'm not sure I can guarantee that. But at least we'll have had that meeting and I suspect things will be a little bit clearer. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments on the kind of cycle and the catch up before we go into the details? Start with you Councillor Heavill. Thank you chair. Thank you for the update. When the conversation is with EY I would appreciate and I'm sure many members would agree that the reminder to EY that they are contracted to do through the PAS scheme to do the audits. Each year, every year, that's what they've been awarded the bid for to do. I appreciate this talk of things changing but until that actually happens, until there's a change in their contract and they are obliged to do it and I think we should push very hard for them to honour their contract. Can you imagine if we didn't our way round? Thank you Councillor Heavill. Do you want to comment on that? I'm not sure I can add anything. I think once we've had the meeting with EY, I'm hoping things will be better. I think Andrew from APMG would like to comment on this because he may have some insight. Thank you. Andrew, did you want to make a comment? Make a comment. Sadly, I can't add any more Peter. We're still waiting for the government and the minister to announce fully what the backstop is. As you say, we are told it's September 24 rather than March 24. We were hoping it was going to be March 24 so it would force the hands of current auditors to actually decide what they're doing and actually audit or disclaim or qualify the opinions for 21, 22, 22, 23 so that then we can continue with our audit of 23, 24. We've, as we said last time when we came to committee, KPMG, we've issued the prepared by client lists and the VFM questionnaire, et cetera, to Peter and the team. So as soon as we've got those back and when the draft accounts for 23, 24 are produced, then we are ready and we have the team ready to undertake the audit and absolutely agree with the councillor prior previous in terms if we're contracted to carry out that audit and we want to carry out the audit as soon as possible. In terms of any disclaimer opinion that may be given on the 22, 23 audit, then as Peter said, we would have to consider doing extra work to make sure that we are happy in terms of the opening balances that are given to us as part of the 23, 24 accounts. It does complicate things, the delays of 24. I'm hoping that as soon as that announcement is made by the minister that the current auditors can decide whether they want to continue with the audit, disclaim the audit, qualify the audit and then we can continue with the 23, 24 and try to bring us back towards the normal business as usual time scale. The backstop for us on the 23, 24 and all future audits across the country for 23, 24 will be March 25, so we have to complete our work by March 25. The sooner that we know, the sooner that the DEY are able to give us the signed opinion on and yourselves, the signed opinion on 22, 23, then we can carry on with the 23, 24 but sadly nothing concrete because the minister hasn't been able to issue the final legislation and the announcement on the backstop. But yeah, we will keep you and obviously Peter informed of our progress. We've put in a request for a meeting with EY as well. That'll probably happen after you've had your meeting, Peter, and as soon as we know any more, then we will let Peter know as well. Thank you. Councillor Williams, you wanted to come back. Yes, to say thank you very much and the fact that you're here as well gives me hope that in the future we will have a better situation with our external auditors than what we presently have. I would like to reiterate that I think we should be very firm with EY what our expectations are as a council and what their obligations are. And as far as I'm concerned until they know otherwise, until there's direction otherwise they need to get on and do the job that they bid for and they were awarded. Thank you. Other councillors, I think councillors don't know what you had your hand up a while ago. Just a question of clarification, so paragraph 29 lost me a little. So the way the process propagates then into 24-25, I wasn't quite clear. So I think a simple explanation probably suffice, but yeah, how this, the effects of the current situation are rippled through to 24-25. So, yeah, so as Andrew said, the 23-24 audit will need to be completed, but obviously the 23-24 audit occurs in the following. I think it looks pretty certain that there will need to be some additional work to give themselves assurance on the opening position, I think that's likely. But then once we get to the end of 24-25, we'll hopefully then be into a normal reporting cycle, which means we'll need to complete the accounts and the audit by the end of September. We'll begin to lose track of what the deadlines are with everything's going on, but once we get into that cycle, things should become a lot easier and a lot more straightforward. So, yeah, by the time we get to the end of March 2025, it should be cool. Does that answer your question? It is a bit of a mess to be honest. So if there's anything that needs further clarification, do ask. It's not for more clarification, maybe a different representation. A graphical timeline might help. I might even sketch one out myself just to look at the dates. Because linear text sometimes doesn't convey something that a graphic would, but aside from that, that's perfectly clear. Thank you, Councillor, but I think that's a very good suggestion. Perhaps when we know a little more about you, what you're doing, perhaps in your notes that you sent following the meeting, we could just have a very simple timeline sharing who's going to do what, work, when. Just so the committee informed us to how that's working. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, thanks. I had a question on this. In the scenario in which Ernst and Young suddenly turn around, is there a title to do and say, right, we're going to do two full audits between now and September. Does the team have capacity as it stands to service that? Or would you be needing to request additional resources and what kind of planning are we making for that scenario? So, I think if there was a full audit, I think it would be extremely tough to get through 2021-22 and 2022-23 audits by September with the stuff that we've currently got. I think we probably would need to take on some additional resources. The difficulty with taking on additional resources, particularly where they haven't got background in the council, is that it won't be easy to get them up to speed, so that will take a bit of time. There's also a danger if you have too many people involved. What's the phrase? Too many cooks all over the phrases. So, I can see this being extremely difficult to actually get through two full audits in what's probably going to be the space of six months by the time the legislation has been passed. Now, we haven't planned at this stage to resource up the full audit because I still think it's unlikely, if I'm honest. I think I referred into the report. The two options that were being discussed was a disclaimer where they don't give any opinion on the accounts and say that the auditors would say they haven't carried out any work. Or a qualification. Now, usually when you get a qualification, it's along the lines of the accounts that are presented fairly apart from a particular area. But at equally, I don't quite know what this qualification would actually look like. So, I think it's all very messy. It's very difficult to plan. I don't particularly want to start committing a lot of resources to something that I don't think is going to happen. But I just don't know. In a way, it's frustrating that we don't have anything clear. Not having an audit is pretty unsatisfactory, if I'm honest. But I just can't see with the timescales we've got how we could actually achieve a full audit in the timescales that I've left. Thank you. That's really helpful context for the committee. I mean, I still wonder if it may be, I mean, I agree there's no point in resourcing up just on the off chance that something unlikely happens. But I think maybe perhaps you and the rest of the kind of corporate leadership team need to be kind of aware there's a possibility that we might need to kind of suddenly kind of change the level of activity in quite a dramatic way to potentially pick that up. That doesn't come out of the blue for everyone. I think that's probably a reasonable point to leave it here. Presumably, our dear lords and masters in DILUC are aware that the absence of this promised guidance is now preventing work taking place. Presumably, they are aware now. I don't want to say sitting on their hands, that's perhaps a little unfair, but that it is impacting the ability of us to coordinate some plans. Has that message got back, do you think? I think so. I think the local government association have written, I'm pretty certain, the SIP for the accounting body, the responsibility for local government again. Everybody knows this is not an ideal situation, and the sooner we get a clear steer as to what's going to happen, the better. What EY are doing, and Jonathan alluded to this earlier, they are doing the value for money work that they would normally do, and they're doing both years at the same time. So they will have done some work, and they're carrying that out at the moment. So, I think once we've had the meeting with EY, I'm hopeful we'll have a clearer idea of who we are, we can then make a decision on what the best approach is going forward. Thank you. I think in a way one of my biggest concerns is that we sort of, I feel like there's a risk we end up paying Ernst and Young for kind of half an audit, which is not really enough for KPMG to rely on, and then having to redo the work anyway. And in some ways kind of half an audit is worse than no audit, and obviously worse than a full audit, but I think we'll just have to negotiate that when we know the shape and contour of where this is going a bit more. So I have had a brief conversation with the close of the audit, so for example if there's a 21-22 audit that's halfway through, the priority will be to finish that audit. So it already suggests that resources will be committed to audits that are ongoing, and therefore not committed to any of our audits, because we haven't actually at the moment as it stands, we've got an open audit. So that again leads me to believe that there's a less likelihood that they could do a full audit. They're unlikely to kind of open up a new one as it were with only six months to go. I suppose that does make a sort of amount of sense. Let's turn, unless there are any other comments on that, let's just turn to the detail of the accounts if there are any comments that members wish to raise, just while people are refreshing their minds. The main question for me, and you alluded to this in the main report, is obviously in parts of the statements where reporting fairly significant surpluses, but they're flowing through into unusable reserves rather than the general fund if I'm reading things correctly. Could you perhaps just explain that a little about in as non-technical a way as you can, what are those surpluses, why are they going into unusable reserves and will they kind of crystallise into something useful at some point in the future, and then I'll come to some other members of the committee. So I think we refer to the increase in our assets. So if we have a revaluation of our assets, we count that as a gain, and obviously that increase is really just a paper. Any increase we have in our assets, we have an equal and opposite change to our unusable reserves, be it our revaluation reserve or our capital adjustment account. So the biggest changes relate to things like our fixed assets. Now those sort of gains crystallise on the sale of such assets, and you'll see in the accounts we refer to the sale of one of our investment properties. So at the point, the 31st of March 2022, we are in negotiations around the sale of one of our investment properties, and then of course early in the 22, 23 financial year that asset was sold. So we show that in our balance sheet as being an asset that we're expecting to sell, so readers understand that actually with that asset, the value of that asset is going to crystallise pretty much straight away onto the end of that year. We also have changed in our pension liability, which again is a bit of a paper entry, because the exact figure of the change won't crystallise anytime soon, and when pensions obviously crystallise over a period of time and will crystallise in a different way to what we're actually showing. So the vast majority of the increases or decreases that we see there are really paper valuation type entries that will feed through to unusable reserves, rather than affect unusable reserves that we can use for the council services. So that may not have been un-technical, but generally big increases to assets, pensions, flow through to unusable reserves, changes to debtors' creditors tend to flow through to unusable reserves because they affect our income expenditure. Thank you. I think that's helpful. I have now found for myself the note 20 on unusable reserves, which just break out at least where all these kind of reserves are tied up, as it were. So can we expect then in the subsequent set of accounts that it's actually quite likely to be a substantial surplus in the general fund? Is that likely from that? So on the best place, I think the best place to see the surplus on the general fund is possibly in the narrative statement where we show our general fund a sort of more summary. So that's page 49. So on page 49 you've got a summary of there was a surplus, and it says appropriation 2, which means we're putting money into our general fund of around about £3 billion in relation to 21-22. I think that probably gives the clearest picture, is if you go to our core statements, the figures are over two statements, so the compensative income expenditure statement and the limited reserve statement, we need to take them together to reach the same position, and you'll see that number at the bottom of the nerves. Thank you. That's very helpful. I saw Councillor Stobart in a while ago, and then I'll come to you, Councillor Heather Williams, and then I will come to Councillor Leeming online. Councillor Stobart. Chair, it's really a minor, well it may not be a minor comment, but when we're looking at accounts from, and it could be even if we are running according to a normal timescale, it's useful to have a reminder of what was happening over the period of the reported account. So I'm thinking 21-22, we were just emerging from COVID. We're in a very dynamic social and economic situation, but I think it's a general thing, just an expansion of the narrative to include some external events that can just be in the back of our minds while we're looking at the accounts to perhaps provoke some questioning or certainly to settle the context more firmly. I think the narrative statement is very good, but it doesn't have that kind of dynamic time element to it. This was a time of quite rapid change of people's working patterns and the economy was shifting and there was still COVID support going on and so on. It would be useful to have that dynamic information. I don't know whether the Chair would be in a position to just remind us of some of the key things going on 21-22 that might have had an influence on external factors that influenced the council in some way. I think I would be supportive of maybe at some time while we're waiting for an audit maybe not to happen to look at this narrative statement and just think is this really, I know some of this is covered in the annual governance statement, but obviously that is. Although we have done an excellent job of highlighting it today, it is somewhat buried in the annual report and perhaps a little more of that content could be brought up to this narrative statement just to discuss some of the challenges that the council is facing. Is that something your team could look at? Yes, on page 51 there's about three paragraphs that say a little bit about the PEND. I think maybe move it up above some of the summary tables as well. Potentially the risk is that you start reading through the natural statement, you get to the first kind of wall of numbers and lose the will to live. So I think the more we can discuss before the numbers hit, I think it might be a benefit. Thank you. Is there anything else you wanted to bring up at this point? No, Chair. Thank you. Councillor Heather Williams, I'll come to you and then I'll come to you. Councillor Leeming. Chose what a difference, because when I get to the numbers I'm happy. I do not lose the will to live. The words make me, you know, I find the trickier bit. I like the numbers, so please do try to cater for all likes and dislikes, Chair. So I've got a few things. First of all on page 48, on five summary of finance performance, the last words I believe would probably mean statement of accounts. It's a bit of a typo there rather than a stemment. Unless that's a new word on me. I'm up for knowing if it's a new word. Then on page 49, now this is an observation that on the HRA for the narrative statement, we can see that when there are variances, there's been sort of, there's three bullet points giving explanatory notes for it. On the general fund, the summary, even though we have, say for example, in the greater shared planning service, there's quite a big variance, there aren't any notes to support it. So I'm wondering as well as we're saying the narrative statement is where probably yes, unless you're a number nerd like me, you're not going to go much further. So some explanatory notes there I think would be beneficial for accessibility. Then on page 51, on the COVID-19 pandemic and aftermath, the middle paragraph, second line from the bottom of that, I think it should be local authorities rather than authorites. So that's one there. On page 95, now on here, on the depreciation amortisation, and I appreciate for a lot of people those two words alone will make them close the accounts. But on the disposal, we've wrote in full from the revaluation reserve and on the impairment we've done, Reval reserve. I'm just thinking, well, I'm making an assumption that that's revaluation reserve, but I think actually sometimes it would be, although we will all naturally have our short hands for the accounts, we should probably put things in full for transparency reasons. On page 100, you can see on the member allowances, now people were looking at this and this is quite a disparity between 2021 on the expenses and 2022. And as Councillor Stobart said the timing, obviously in 2021 we were locked in our houses and not leaving so there wasn't the mileage, but perhaps a sentence just to explain that variance might be helpful for people that are picking up the document. And also congratulations that they made it to page 100. So I think that was that then on page 103, I've got a couple of queries here, but one of it's the same as on 104. We give sort of the wage brackets and normally goes like 50 to 54, 99, then comes 55, but then all of a sudden we go from 89 to 105. That's probably because nobody's in those brackets, but we can see in other areas where it's not. It makes it look like there's something missing. So we might want to, even if the answer is zero, might want to continue that symmetry because equally it makes it clear that it's a nought rather than forgotten. And I think we have the same on the first table on page 104. So nought to 20, 20 to 40, then we go 60, 40 to 60, then we go all of a sudden 80 to 100, 200 to 220. And there we can see there are noughts in those categories. So I think that would be helpful. Also, termination benefits, exit packages. Could we just have a bit of explanation as to how that is different to redundancy? Because an exit package, I assume, is where we're paying people as they leave the authority to take early retirement and the like. And obviously there's quite, you know, it is a sightable sum, so we could just be clear as to what is different here to redundancies. So I think that's, and then last, oh no, I've got two more, last but no least, page 142. I think they might be on the Civic Affairs Committee on the last section and monitoring the council's code of contact. I think we're missing an apostrophe. So yes, I think that completes me for now, Chair. Thank you very much for those very diligent comments. You have actually alerted me something else that's slightly strange. So back on page 104, just looking at those exit package cost bands in the 80 to 100 category. It looks like there is one exit package, but that it has no cost associated with it in 2021. I'm reading that table correctly. Yes, I agree with Councillor Williams, that those, I think those tables would be improved, as she suggests, by listing out the intermediate bandings, even if there are kind of nil values there, because I agree not the sort of comprehending ones there is quite challenging. Can we leave you to go in and look through those? I think, and hopefully Patrick has a note of anything if you want to check and we have the recording as well. Chair, they were some suggestions, but I did have a question as well around these exit packages. Yes, because normally you think of people sort of leaving when you want and you think redundancies. We've been told there haven't been redundancies, so what's the difference between this exit package? Can you give, there's a little bit in the paragraph, but is there any further detail you can provide on what's being captured in these exit package cost bands? Possibly need to speak to someone to be absolutely clear, I'm just thinking. I'm happy to take some of your writing. Given that we're straying into HR matters, perhaps something in writing would be safer than an answer off the cuff on this occasion. If that could go to the whole committee, I think that would be, if we can just get a clarification on what those exit packages consist of, that would be appreciated. Councillor Leaming, I think we will come to you now if that's possible. Thank you, Chair. Apologies, everyone, that I'm not here in person today. I have Covid and I don't want to share it with anybody. My question is actually to do with probably the slightly previous topic about how we're handling the catch-up process, the questions around what will be audited, if anything. My question is, are we making sure that whether or not these things are formally audited, we are getting external verification of things like our assets, our asset valuations, our pensions. These are material valuations that would be rigorously audited and they will have a consequence for our opening balances for the 23-24 accounts. Could I ask what processes are in place for those significant assets and liability valuations, please? Thank you. I think that's next in question, Mr Maddock. Yes, thank you, Councillor. So the processes that we normally follow for our accounts closure are all being followed in the normal way. So our valuations have been instructed to provide our valuations in the same way as they've done for previous years and in the same way they'll do for future years. And similarly, with the pension fund, we get our actual report in the same way and we treat it in the accounts in the same way that we have done for past years. So all of those processes are being carried out in the same way, all the same checks that we would normally do. So there's no change to that side of things. As I was saying, it's just a case of whether any audit work is done on those figures later. Thank you, Pisa. Thank you, Mr Maddock, and thank you, Chair. So do you think there's going to be any possibility that there is a limited audit, that there's a sort of risk-focused minimal audit, and that we have a list of priorities of critical things that we need to concentrate on being materially accurate, so that we have some comfort in our closing balances, opening balances of the 23-24 accounts? Do you think this is something that may end up being decided on by our audit team? So the two options that have been floated have been a disclaimer, which means they're not going to do anything, or some form of qualification, and it may be that if they reach some form of qualification, they will have done some work. So that sort of suggests what you're suggesting, Council, that they've done some work, and whenever they do an audit, they concentrate, or they put more effort into the areas that they see as a higher risk. It's difficult to say too much until we've spoken to them next Tuesday. What I think needs to happen is that there needs to be, in my opinion, a consistent approach to all of the outstanding audits, because I don't think it's going to be particularly helpful if they decide they're going to do a full audit on local authority A, and they're then not going to do anything on local authority B. So my gut feeling is that we'll end up with some form of a disclaimer, if I'm brilliantly honest, but we'll see what we get out of them on Tuesday. Thank you, Mr Malik, and just to reiterate, I think anything that doesn't have a full audit behind it when it lands in as the opening balance is in 23-24 will be subject to something pretty rigorous as part of the 23-24 audit, is my understanding. I think that's quite important. If you have a couple of years where you haven't had a full audit, it is quite important for the 23-24 audit to do everything that possibly can to make sure that those balances are materially accurate, and I'm assured that that's what KPMG are intending to do based on our conversations. Thank you. Councillor Liebing, were there any further questions or comments you wish to make? No, thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr Malik. It's reassuring to know that at our end we're doing all we can to make sure that we've got the usual procedures in place. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining online and not coughing on us. It is appreciated. Just as a final parting shot, as it were, it's very possible you've done this already, but I wonder if you or someone from your team would just review the adjustments that we have had to make to the accounts, let's say, over the past kind of three or four years, and just check that none of those issues have been repeated in the current set of accounts. I mean, I think at each stage we've obviously kind of made quite substantial improvements to our system so that it may well be that it's not possible for such a mistake to be repeated, but perhaps in the meantime, before we know what's happening to the audience, it would seem a little foolish if we made some mistake that had previously been pointed out to us, so that might perhaps be a useful little exercise while we wait to find out what's happening. Are there any final comments or questions on the accounts? Councillor Stowbart, thank you. Chair and Councillor Leeming, you kind of expressed in very precise words what I was struggling for, and I think Mr Maddox's response has been very appropriate, but those areas of risk, information flow, the things that have characterised previous audits, it would behovers to go back and look at those and say, well, did we learn the lessons, and hopefully there wouldn't be an issue in the future, but I think the past is always a good teacher of what might happen, and where the information flows got constricted for whatever reason, or there's some trouble with finding information externally, whatever, it would behovers to look at all of those and say, you know, how can we deal with them better, but I think it's been expressed very clearly, and I just wanted to add my weight to that thought. Thank you, Councillor Stowbart. Any more for any more? No, so we have been asked to approve the draft accounts. Members have made a number of comments and suggestions, which I'm sure will be taken on board, and there will, I mean, even without an order, there will still be a final set of accounts at some future date, so we can check to see that those additions have been made for that. But are you otherwise subject to those changes? Are you happy to approve the draft accounts for 21-22 as shown in Appendix A? We have that by affirmation. Brilliant. Thank you, so that recommendation has agreed. We've also been asked to note the situation as regards the 21-22 and 22-23 accounts, and the likely deadline of 30 September 2024, and also the change of auditor for 23-24, and the following four, not five, years to KPMG, and the potential need for additional work for them for assurance for that year. Sorry, Councillor, how are the winnings? No problems on number five at all, and you've made the change. On five, yes, we can note it, but that, I just want to make clear, that doesn't mean I'm happy or willing to accept it, but I note the report that's been given. Thank you. So that is all duly noted, perhaps, with some reservations. Agenda item seven, Matters of Topical Interest. We've certainly talked about a lot of topical interest already, but if any members or officers or auditors wish to raise anything that's not otherwise been covered at the meeting that needs to be brought to the committee's attention, please let me know. I'm not seeing any great excitement for that. So, that brings a meeting to a... Oh, sorry. At the bell, yeah. We've not had our RIPR update. I think because this was an extra bonus meeting to approve these accounts rather than a lecture. A bonus? Yes. A bonus audit. Did we not? I will... I'm pretty certain it's part of the regular quarterly... It will be brought on the quarterly cycle, but if we've missed one, let's double-check and bring that to the next meeting. You can't deprive John of his moment. No, indeed. I was going to say, I know there haven't been any use of the regulations, because then John told me last week that actually... Let's make sure it's on the March agenda. There we are. We are confidently told there has been... continues to be no use of such power. Thank you. So, that brings the meeting to a close. The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for 19 March 2024 at 10am. Thank you very much for joining. I close the meeting there.