Agenda item

Report of the External Auditor (Grant Thornton)

The Audit and Procurement Committee considered a report of the Director of Finance and Resources, that set out the external auditor, Grant Thornton’s, report on the Council’s arrangements for securing economy, efficiency and effectiveness in its use of resources for the financial year 2024/25.  The report demonstrates a positive direction of travel and assurances regarding the arrangements in place.

In addition to the external audit of the statutory statement of accounts, the Council’s external auditor are required under the national Audit Office (NAO) Code of Practice, to carry out an annual audit which tests arrangements that the Council has in place to ensure economy, efficiency and effectiveness in its use of resources.

The Appendix to the report set out Auditor’s report for 2024/25, including recommendations where they consider improvements may be made, and a management response for each.  It also presented progress on previously made recommendation. 

The Committee noted that the external auditors are required to prepare their report based on the following specified criteria:

·  Financial sustainability: how the Council plans and manages its resources to ensure it can continue to deliver its servicecs.

·  Governance: how the Council ensures that it makes informed decisions and properly manages risks.

·  Improving economy, efficiency and effectiveness: how the Council uses information about its casts and performance to improve the way it manages and delivers its services.

The equivalent report for 2023/24 was considered and noted by this committee at it’s meeting on 29^th January 2025 (Minute 45/24 refers).  That report highlighted delays around publishing of audited accounts, and although the Council had made significant progress towards recovery, a single weakness was identified by the external auditor under the governance criteria.  A single key recommendation was made on this, which was summarised as “For 2024/25, the Council will need strong arrangements in place to ensure that it can publish unaudited accounts by 30^th June 2025 and to support the external audit process that allow for publication of audited accounts by February 2026”.

The Government had set out deadlines (or backstops) for all Council’s to meet regarding the publication of accounts, which were summarised within the report.  Coventry had addressed the key weakness identified by Grant Thornton as the causal factors in the delay of prior years and made significant improvements in its processes for completing statements of accounts, such that all dates thus far have been achieved, including draft accounts for 2024/25 being published by 30^th June 2025.  Page 9 of the Appendix indicated that the statement of accounts audit process is progressing and that they consider the Council to be on target to achieve the February 2026 date for issuing an audit opinion in respect of the 2024/25 accounts.  As a result, Grant Thornton have formally removed the key recommendation and have assessed the Council as no longer having a weakness in this regard.

A number of other improvement recommendations from 2023/24 and prior years had also been resolved or superseded, with only 2 now identified as still in progress within the 2024/25 report.  It is expected that these will also be addressed prior to the next annual audit for 2025/26.

Grant Thornton had identified as part of the 2024/25 audit report, 4 new improvement recommendations which have been accepted and a management response and implementation timeline has been included within the Appendix.

RESOLVED that the Audit and Procurement Committee note the Auditor’s Annual Report for the year ending 31^st March 2025, appended to the report submitted, including the improvement recommendations contained within.