Decision details

It was RESOLVED that the Minutes of the meetings of the Audit Committee held on 12 November 2019 and 27 November 2019 be approved as correct records and signed by the Chair.

The Chair announced that a presentation on the progress of the Council’s ICT Strategy would be submitted to the next meeting of the Committee to be held on 17 March 2020.

In respect of Minute 3 of the meeting of the Committee held on 27 November 2019, it was noted that an appropriate senior officer in the Regeneration Team would be invited to a future meeting in the summer of 2020 to provide an update on the financial risks associated with the Queensway LLP.

In terms of the 2018/19 external audit, the Assistant Director (Finance & Estates) advised that Ernst & Young had 5 outstanding queries.  Due to priority work on the Council’s budget for 2020/21, she had been unable to respond to these queries, but would do so during February 2020, thereby enabling the Statement of Accounts to be signed off.

The Assistant Director (Finance & Estates) commented that Hertfordshire CFO’s would be collectively writing to the Public Sector Audit Appointments (PSAA) regarding clarification about EY’s move to for a 30 September deadline for 2019/20 audit of accounts from the 31 July for audit sign off of the accounts.  It is the CFO’s preference that if the Finance Team are required to publish their unaudited accounts by the end of May each year, it would be backward step to wait until the end of September for the accounts to signed off.