Agenda item

To receive the External Audit progress report from Grant Thornton.

Liam Royle, Public Sector Audit Manager, Grant Thornton and Jackson Murray, Director, Public Sector Audit, Grant Thornton, presented the Wiltshire Council and Pension Fund external audit progress report.

The representative stated that in the last update at the July meeting, it was stated that the intention was to bring the 2023/24 audit plan to this meeting and there was an indicative audit plan in the appendix to the report. This showed what work would have been undertaken. However, Grant Thornton were not going to be able to undertake the 2023/34 audit, as there was not enough time before the backstop date of 28 February 2025 to do the audit and publish the accounts. So those accounts would receive a backstop disclaimer opinion. It was highlighted that Grant Thornton did want to undertake the audits, although there were clearly going to be caveats around what the audit opinions might mean. They would like to give assurance where they could, as this would give a better starting point for 2024/25. There was an impact from draft accounts preparation for the preceding years so there had been some difficulty in progressing work that they could have done this year.

Grant Thornton had made some good progress in the pension fund audit and hopefully they would bring the final pension audit to next meeting. Materiality had been reduced and was lower than normal due to the anticipated backstopping of prior periods. There would be a £15,000 fee variation for additional work undertaken. Also, a smaller variation of £3,765 would be raised as the Public Sector Audit Appointments (PSAA) had not included this. The pension fund audit would get signed off alongside the main Wiltshire Council accounts, and therefore was delayed as they could not issue opinions on those until they were issued for the main accounts. 

Grant Thornton had also been engaging with Deloitte regarding the outstanding audit opinions.

The backstop date of the 13 December 2024 for the accounts up to 2022/23 was highlighted and it was stressed that in order for that to happen the 2022/23 accounts would need to published for 30 days ahead of consideration, so would need publishing soon. The draft 2023/24 accounts would need to be published mid-January 2025. A letter sent to the Chairman of the Committee explaining the situation in further detail was highlighted and could be seen at page 105 of the agenda.

It was stated that 5 years of no assurance external audits was significant to come back from. This could make the 2024/25 audit difficult as how could they gain assurance? It normally took about 3 years to get back to a clean audit opinion. The regulatory bodies were trying to work out details as to how things would work.

The Chairman called a recess at 12.50pm. At which point Cllrs Howard Greenman, George Jeans and Pip Ridout left the meeting due to other commitments.

The meeting reconvened at 1.00pm.

Members queried the reduction in the level of materiality. In response it was explained that this was not the only audit where Grant Thornton had been unable to bring forward assurances from previous years and for all of those audit’s materiality had been reduced. For Wiltshire Council, Grant Thornton had to take into consideration the statutory recommendations by the previous auditor, the 4 years without assurance, and the limited assurance internal audits coming through. There was a scale auditors adhered too. Due to the circumstances described above, Wiltshire Council was at the bottom of that scale. Significant risks had been identified. Expenditure was a significant risk, which had been raised by Deloitte and would have been raised in the 2023/24 audit.

It was confirmed that Grant Thornton saw all of SWAP’s internal audit reports when they were issued. However, they could not rely directly on SWAP’s work but would have to undertake their own work. So, there could be some areas of duplication, but external auditors tended to look through a slightly different lens, as it was all about the financial statements.

Members commented that they found the aggregation of the Wiltshire Council and the Pension Fund audits slightly unhelpful.

On the proposal of the Chairman, seconded by Cllr Stuart Wheeler, it was,

Resolved:

To note the Wiltshire Council and Pension Fund external audit progress report.