Issue - meetings

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Enabling presented an update on the Finance Recovery Plan for the Executive Committee’s consideration.

Members were informed that the purpose of the report was to set out the processes the Council had been following to rectify a deterioration in its financial position and processes due to the impact of the implementation of a new financial system in February 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic.  A finance recovery programme had been put in place from April 2022 to start to rectify the situation. This was reported through to the Executive Committee in September 2022.    

The Financial Recovery Plan had built on comments from the external auditors, Grant Thornton, relating to the 2019/20 accounts, which were only approved in the autumn of 2021 and the subsequent issuing of the Section 24 recommendations to the Council on 31st October 2022 due to non-delivery of the 2020/21 Statement of Accounts. Comments on the 2019/20 accounts had highlighted issues on working papers, which were raised as a significant issue.

The Committee was informed that the Council continued to move forward with the rectification processes required in particular:

·       The Corporate Peer Challenge took place in March 2023, which was a joint review with Bromsgrove District Council, and the associated action plans had been discussed at the Executive Committee meeting held on 13^th June 2023.  This included a “finance action plan”, to meet the Peer Challenge’s recommendations.

·       Redditch Members, at a meeting of the Executive Committee held on 13^th June 2023, approved the implementation of the recommendations of the Bromsgrove Audit Task Group whose objective was to carry out a root and branch review on how and why Bromsgrove District Council received Section 24 recommendations.  This Task Group met in February 2023 and its findings were initially presented to the Redditch Audit, Governance and Standards Committee at a meeting held on 23^rd March 2023.

·       The Audit, Governance and Standards Committee, as a standing agenda item, reviewed progress against the audit recommendations, and national and local deadlines.

In terms of closure of the 2020/21 accounts, Members were advised of the following timeframes:

·             Agreement of treatment of the take on balances would take place in early July 2023 as significantly more testing was required by the external auditors.

·             Provision of the draft 2020/21 accounts to the external auditors (to begin the audit) would take place in July 2023.  This was dependent on the external auditor’s confirmation that they had approved both Councils’ take-on balances work.  The auditors were having issues in how they needed to test the transactional data due to their “normal” models not working on the authorities’ data.

·             The 2020/21 audit was due to take place between July to September 2023 (although these were estimated timeframes).

·             Sign off of the 2020/21 accounts was scheduled to occur by November 2023.

·             Closure of the 2021/22 accounts was planned for sign off by May 2024.

·             Closure of the 2022/23 accounts was planned to be signed off by November 2024.

The Committee  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18