Agenda item

To receive a report by Julie Masci, Key Audit Partner Grant Thornton.

The Engagement Leader from Grant Thornton, Julie Masci introduced the progress report providing an update on both financial statement audits for the Council and the pension fund. There had been good progress with both audits over the last couple of months and good cooperation from officers in response to the audit enquiries. She referenced pg 145 of the report and Grant Thornton was looking to present Audit findings reports for both audits back to this Committee in November which was subject to any further residual work required in response to the outcomes of the recent health and safety investigation findings. She corrected that the report references the building control team within the Council but should instead be the building health and safety team which was a different team. Any reference to building control was in reference to building health and safety. Grant Thornton’s value for money report had now been concluded, and a draft had been issued to officers for their review, comments and management responses. The Value for Money Report would come back to Committee in November. For the financial statements, all the key testing for audit work was progressing well, and there would need to be specific work in response to the investigation. As when fraud or suspected fraud was identified across any audit, there are enhanced risk management procedures required to follow in response to that. Most importantly, Grant Thornton was attempting to identify the scope that given the issues identified in terms of controls and the weaknesses identified in those controls, whether there was any further risk of control override. There would be targeted completeness work to obtain additional assurance around the completeness of matters identified by SWAP’s review. There would also be an update at the next Committee in the Audit Findings Report. The final audit opinion would not be issued till such time as the police investigatory work has been completed, as it was possible that further matters may arise on the back of the ongoing investigation and therefore, advised to keep the audit investigation open until police work has concluded.

Cllr Suttle asked if the police do not come back by the end of February, would you add a specific paragraph to the accounts?

Julie Masci responded that there were specific circumstances that Grant Thornton was able to go beyond the statutory backstop update, under the legislation where auditors sought to exercise any additional audit powers. Depending on where things went with the investigation, this would be discussed with officers and Grant Thornton would seek to make further enquiries around where the current situation was with the police to allow them to assess what impact that would have on Grant Thornton’s opinion.

The Director Legal and Democratic, Jonathan Mair commented that the Police investigation was not a referral that Dorset Council made to the police and the police investigation was not an investigation of fraud within the Council. The police came to us because they were already investigating a supplier and a temporary member of our staff who were both involved in the Health and Safety Compliance work. It was a separate investigation by the police that could have relevance to the Council.

Noted.