Agenda item

Dewi A Morgan, Host Authority Statutory Finance Officer and Sian Pugh, Host Authority Group Accountant to present the report.

Approve:

·         'ISA260’ report by Audit Wales in respect of NWEAB

·         NWEAB’s final Statement of Accounts for 2021-22 (post-audit)

The report was submitted by Dewi Morgan (Statutory Finance Officer) and Yvonne Thomas (Audit Wales).

RESOLVED to approve the:

·            'ISA260’ report by Audit Wales in respect of NWEAB

·            NWEAB’s final Statement of Accounts for 2021/22 (post-audit)

REASONS FOR THE DECISION

The final version (post-audit) of the Statement of Accounts for 2021/22 was presented.  The main amendments since the pre-audit version were outlined in section 16 of the report and Appendix 3 of the Audit Wales ‘ISA260’.

The Chair of the Board, together with the Head of Finance, had been asked to certify the Letter of Representation, electronically (Appendix 1 to Audit Wales’ report) after the NWEAB had approved the above.

After receiving the Letter of Representation duly certified by the Chairman and the Head of Finance, the Auditor General for Wales (Adrian Crompton) would issue the certificate on the accounts.

DISCUSSION

Details were provided about the background and relevant considerations and the consultations held.

The Statutory Finance Officer noted:-

·         That paragraph 10 of the Wales Audit report noted that they intended to issue an unqualified audit opinion on the accounts this year, once the NWEAB would give the Letter of Representation to Audit Wales based on what was noted in Appendix 1 to the report.

·         That Appendix 3 to the auditors' report drew attention to one correction made to the accounts during the audit, and that that was a technical issue only involving pensions.

The Statutory Finance Officer further noted that he wished to thank Yvonne Thomas and the team at Audit Wales for their work on the audit, and to Sian Pugh (Group Accountant - Corporate and Projects) and the team in the Finance Department at Cyngor Gwynedd for their work preparing the Statement of Accounts.

Yvonne Thomas (Audit Wales) was welcomed to the meeting and was invited to speak:-

Yvonne Thomas noted that she was pleased to say that Audit Wales was of the opinion that the accounts were an accurate and fair picture of the NWEAB's financial situation for the financial year.  She drew attention to a few points in the report, namely:-

·         That auditors could never provide complete assurance that the accounts had been accurately stated.  Instead, a relevance level had been specified in an attempt to identify and rectify audit misstatements that could otherwise lead to misleading the user of the accounts, and for this year's audit, a relevance level of £57,000 had been specified.

·         That the audit had not been completed at the time of drafting the report, but that it could now be confirmed that the audit had been completed and that not further issues had been raised.

·         That the report referred to the impact of Covid on this year's audit in terms of the audit timetable and approach, and given continued remote working, it was intended to use electronic signatures to approve and certify this year's accounts.

·         In terms of significant issues arising from the Audit, that it was a pleasure to report that only minor narrative and presentational errors arose from the audit, and the fact that so few issues had arisen was a positive message and reflected well on the arrangements in place to prepare the accounts.

·         That she wished to thank Sian Pugh (Group Accountant - Corporate and Projects) and the team for their support to complete the audit.

·         That the one correction made to the accounts was a presentational improvement only, and did not have any other effect on the financial statements.

The Chair noted that the report was positive which confirmed that we had an effective team within the Finance Department at Cyngor Gwynedd.