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okay are we live now yeah everybody well how are you on to the audit corporate governance meeting are there any apologies please yeah counter heart yeah we have apologies from councillor hearts right yeah just counselor uh code of conduct any declarations of interest please yes mayor chair it's a councillor keane um i'd like some advice essentially but i think i i would like to declare an interest in agenda items four and five uh number four if necessary because cheshire police is mentioned as a preset raising body that is impacted by the uh the figures so if necessary i would declare an interest in and perhaps with your advice chair not not take part in uh in a vote on the matter or discussion uh and also the potential of gender item 5 with cheshire police or the the pcc owning much estate in cheshire that would be subject to uh national non-domestic rates i wonder whether i should um maybe just to be on the safe side require an interest and perhaps not take part in in that item if that's agreeable chair that's fine thanks david for that thank you chairman okay know the declarations then we'll go on to the minutes the previous happy to confirm those yes happy together yeah okay thanks we'll then go on for council oh sorry it's too item for council tax base we need to approve the figures who will who's going to lead on this please that'll be me chair regular report that you receive each year where we've gone through an estimated the number of the equivalent of van d properties across the whole of borington which is required as part of the formal budget setting process the numbers as in the last few years have increased very slightly due to a number of properties within the town um but other than that there's very little difference than in previous years okay are there any comments or questions on the figures the self-explanatory so we're happy to agree to council that counts next please and could i just question is in 8.4 the calculation yeah that's right um do you actually round the figures up in each of these i think there's a slight um difference between the figures in um 8.4 and what they should be like they probably have been rounded up we can make sure they have been rounded to make sure when they come forward to full council if there is an issue okay okay so subjects are being double checked are we happy to approve the base yeah yeah okay all right we'll go all into item five thank you chair so i item five is around the national non-domestic rates forecast um similarly used as part of the budget process although clear can have less over an impact because we keep such a smaller proportion of our business rates but again this is the the form and the detail that we have to return each year um i think what a couple of things i'd point out that we're continuing to pull our business rates uh the intention is to carry on doing that with halton anderson helens that does help us keep a small extra percentage across the three authorities that we wouldn't otherwise get to keep um as councillor keane mentioned it does have a minor impact on to police um i i don't think it probably was an issue for um in terms of the way he raised it um and obviously all businesses have to pay business rates unless the government gives some other exemptions anyway so but here the papers are here um as previously to delegate for me to complete the and to authorize that form and for completion to mhclg okay thanks for that any comments or questions please okay i'm happy to agree the delegation to the director and the cabinet member responsible yes thank you okay right thanks for that uh item six commercial capital governance and price waterhouse action plan we've had a very comprehensive report and action plan for price waterhouse um i take it everyone's read it we can either go through it page by page or you can just raise issues as you see fit how do you want to proceed i'm happy to present part of the report or the covering report if you want me to do that chair and just point out some of the issues from this thanks gene going to do that yes please um so the report is as you say it's the action plan from the independent commercial governance review that pwc did and also with this report we've put the local government association um review which was carried out as a supplement review to the peer review that was carried out in march 2019 uh we've collated all the output to just pull together all the improved governance arrangements that we're now working through so the lga review we note there at paragraph 3.3 um the council asked the lga review team specifically to review the council's commercial activities but they didn't do that at the time and what they did they they the council invited them to conduct a more detailed financial review after that peer review so this is the the report from that that's attached at appendix 2. and that was this in 2020 so there has been a little bit of a delay on that but what we've done now is we've reflected all the recommendations in there and tied them into the pwc uh action plan as well so just the conclusion at 3.5 pwc concluded that the governance frameworks in line with good practice and there's a clear understanding of skills requirements external advisors are appropriately used and so on um and then at 3.6 they also noted um the improvements that had been made over the years and then noted that how that as it became more embedded would further improve um governance arrangements i've pointed out the internal audit reviews that have been done over the past few years as well because we followed this journey of from the capital programme and the big capital projects right through to the more complex reviews that we see now and we have recognized that in the annual uh reports from internal audit as well and again we've cross-referenced any of the internal audit reports and findings into the pwc action plan we've also cross-referenced recent public interest reports that grant thornton have issued because we wanted to make sure anything raised in those which if there's anything that crosses over with the action plan we're taking that into account so we've also included any cross-reference to those so it's really to pull everything together to make sure that we've got everything in that action plan and now there's a working group that's working through all of those actions and what the working group's done at 4.2 just to bring to your attention we've taken out what we think are the really high risk areas and there are three main headings there how the council manages the commercial governance arrangements including all the subsidiary companies how we make sure the reporting is clear so making sure that's all clear for all the decision making that's taken and also looking at the training program membership of boards and so on and making sure the relevant training and expertise is there so that that's the main issues out of that report as i say the meeting regularly to look at the actions that are needed and we've got senior leadership team um looking at this on a regular basis to make sure the action is undertaken and then the full action plans are at the back of this are there any comments on the report or the action plan yes chairman yes okay thank you yes the three questions the first question um why why has it taken so long for the the lga follow-up report to come to us because it says issued july 2019 which is a long while ago now so that's my first question the other one on the reports i mean i've seen we've seen the pwc action plan which is certainly very comprehensive but what about the why haven't we actually got a copy of the original pwc report or unless it's all contained in the action plan i assume it isn't from what jeans just said so that's my first pair of questions the second one if you look on page 38 and 39 it talks about um at r29r21 uh reviewing some broad membership of um the two of the sort of a few things which are a fairly high profile which is redwood bank and together energy so i just like and i know this is the action plan but i'd just like to know a little bit about the thinkings it talks about independent people there so i'm just wondering what the initial thinking is on that um my final question on page 45 of our report is it talks about the reserves it's quite damning about the low level of warrington's reserves which came as a little bit of a surprise to me but i hadn't really i thought we had reasonable reserves but it is quite damning i think there's something about the way we report them which is not quite not quite normal as well so again i i sort of like comment on on that too please i'm happy to take all of those chair if that helpful and as us i think i'll try and take them in the order that you asked them counselor marks um and if i if i've noticed them down slightly wrong if you want to correct me as i go along um in terms of delay on the lga report the draft report was completed as you say however we hadn't agreed the final report at that stage there were a number of errors in the original report um we gave our comments back to the lga and corrected a number of those errors um that required a little bit of going to and through both the council and uh the lga and they issued us what was then their second version of the draft in it was february 2020 i think we should probably have done something quicker on it at that point however at that ish at that point it wasn't long after that i think we were all hands to the pump in terms of dealing with kovid which is why it then got left for a few months before we came back and revisited it something and included within that the action of getting pwc to do their work was kind of one of the actions the lga had recommended so we ended up putting the two things together in order that we could have that and bring it back as one report here um actually danny might want to correct me on this or gene but on the actual action plan the report from pwc my understanding is that initially pwc hadn't wanted to put their full report into the public domain which is why they did a full presentation to uh members of the committee as a separate um presentation before the last meeting but i i think there was an issue over why they didn't want us to put the whole report into the public domain from my perspective i'd be quite happy to share that report with members of the committee i just don't think they wanted us to actually report it but we might just need to go back and check on that item yeah i think you're actually i think you're actually correct on that winston and the reason he didn't want it going into the public domain and there's a lot of work went into that report and what what they obviously want to do is do this report for the councils and and if it went into the public domain theoretically other councils could just copy the methodology but barring anything within their terms and terms of reference i can't see why we can't share that with all members of this committee just not as a public document in terms of those two key recommendations around the governance and the board makeup of both redwood and together energy they they are two key things um i take them separately though in terms of redwood bank when we invested into the bank at the time of a newly formed bank on the best advice it was probably right to go ahead without the council having representation on the board because of the conflicts between if we put somebody on the board um if i take myself i can't be on the board of the bank although i am a shareholder observer if i'm on the board i'd be conflicted in my role as the council section 151 officer anybody that we put onto the board of the bank their first duty is to act for the bank for the bank and not directly to the council and there is therefore that kind of a of a risk if we put somebody on i think though it's becoming apparent as the bank is growing um as the bank is now starting to approach towards being four years old it's probably getting to a point where it may well worth as it grows and becomes more complex for the council to reconsider whether we do put somebody onto that board and to look after the council's um best interests rather than it being just me as an observer and that's something i think we probably do need to to consider and i think was delegated um to myself and to matthew cumberbatch to to keep that under review so we could make that appointment we also had within the original contract with the bank um under our shareholder agreement we have the right to appoint a board member at any time so it's just a matter of if we do that we need to find the right person and it's clearly that's quite a a detailed skill set to be able to sit on the board of a bank including needing to be pra approved through the bank of england in terms of together energy limited um it perhaps is starting now that's now getting to a point where we have only put the one person on the board which is currently the chief executive he actually has the vote of three people because we have got three places on that board and myself and cumberbatch have been considering who else we put onto that board i think that again where we're at it's been difficult perhaps during the last year to put somebody onto the board in quite the same way but i think again that's something we need to do quite shortly hence why it's on the action plan so that we can take up our other two places on the on the board of the of the energy company alongside that also ensuring that the board of the ng companies proceeds in in putting other independent board members on there so we start to get further expertise across the energy sector uh and the final one i think was on a low level of reserves um i guess maybe it's not something we didn't quite pick out in the covering report on the lga report i don't actually it's one of the things i don't agree with the lga report on in fact as part of the budget process this year we've been doing a fundamental um review of all of our reserves we don't have a low level of reserves we haven't got a huge level of reserves but compared to a lot of lots of councils actually we've got quite good reserves the issue that the lga picked up and i don't think is properly reflected in their report is they commented on how we treat um i think it was they picked up on what they called the general fund reserve now in warrington we've got three funds that technically um could count as being the general fund reserve we have our general fund reserve we have a strategic reserve which we have always described as being a safety net and fallback but we've also had the mtfp reserve which most councils don't have but from an accounting point of view all three of those reserves are really the same thing so if you wanted to compare us with another local authority it would normally be the figure that others would put in their general reserve you'd need to include all three of our reserves in that analysis um we've changed since the uh this was picked up by the lga we've changed the way we're putting our figures into the annual return so that when it goes back as part of the sit for stats or part of the revenue out turn report it's quite clear to anybody looking externally what figure they are comparing like for like between warrington and other local authorities i think that was um all of the questions counselor uh yeah no no thank you lyndon yes i mean i certainly sort of welcome that your talk about some of these independent board members i think the sooner that can be done the better because i say this is as we well know very controversial item issues these and having an independent person there can only be helpful out of thought to all parties involved so i hope that can happen sooner rather than later okay thank you for the response lyndon you're on mutual yeah i was just asking ian if he was volunteering to go on the board he's not the wrestling chair steve parish um obviously i'm a board member on the transport board but um and i've got qualifications in transport but obviously to be a member of a banking board is another matter entirely just not to query what the status of that role would be because ian said an independent member uh but of course linton said you know your first duty is a sharehold as is to the bank but technically to the to the shareholders which includes warrington borough council um and the same way together energy are there any shareholders other than the council yeah in terms of the bank it would be and the bank have already got independent um non-exec directors appointed to the bank i i guess what we were talking about is whether warrington would want to an appoint a separate independent one example that was there partly to but it's difficult they aren't there really to look after the shareholder although they are overall but really they are there to look after the interests of the bank i think what we'd be looking for is somebody that was coming from a warrington perspective and they're therefore able to look after our interests in some way if we did that um on yeah so so i missed the other question sorry counselor um yeah i mean i'm um saying holders in terms of together energy yeah well it's the duty of is that what is the duty of shareholders on any company who's with the underlying it and again the together energy other shareholders can't remember are the shareholders other than the council yes they are the councils a 50 shareholder and the other shareholder was the original owner of the company um paul richards in the majority shareholder who is uh the managing director of the company as well okay and how's it doing uh together and she's doing very well yes um in fact we're pulling together at the moment a report that's going on to the next cabinet meeting that has an update on the majority of our large importance and showing how well they're they are doing at the moment i have a query which i don't expect a detailed answer to on page 34 r10 sorts of key decision limits to be reviewed yep would that be reviewed upwards or downwards it was actually a note by pwc that our key decision limit is actually quite low compared to a number of other local authorities so it was really it was a big report on that at a february meeting i think that's down down as matt and adam to review it but it was just whether or not and that probably needs to go through either this this committee or through constitutional subcommittee whether we would want to raise it and i know we did look at it as a council probably seven or eight years ago we and we decided at that point it was right um even then when we reviewed it i don't think if we were even if we raised it up very slightly in line with some of the other local authorities even if you raised it to half a million pounds it probably doesn't bring many more decisions out of what we're already going to cabinet but it's just to keep it under review given we consider reviewing it so we'll consider it on the february meeting okay and then it'll be job done out of the way around it you can take that one off are there any other comments or reports on price waterhouses recommendations could ask you a question please sure just um it is related and it's it's related to the government i suppose um so warrington have um have been mentioned in a a national journal or a magazine in the last couple of issues of it and i was just wondering whether or not the uh pricewaterhouse sam cooper review would reassure us as a committee that the um and warrington taxpayers that the government that is in place regarding the council's investment strategy and and also its accounts are um appropriate yeah i think if you do if you do see the entire review which as i say i've got no problem with sharing with with the committee i think it will give you some of that extra reassurance that you're looking for okay thank you yeah just going back to publishing that report and are we probably publishing now that would price water has any problem with that because it's what 18 months old so the best methodology that contained there is out of date well old hat by now surely they couldn't isn't 18 months old it's only a few months old they only completed the work um november december time yeah which is why that's why i'm happy to share it but i don't think we i don't think under the terms of the contract we had with them we can share it publicly because they they would want to be using that with other other local authorities rather than other local authorities trying to present are you scaring the report with members it will be on a private basis not on a gender item yes i think it's worth reiterating sure what the conclusion of the report was and primarily to answer the previous question you know various articles are appearing again in private tie in other publications that are not true and overall and price what this is actually in the report and i'll read the quote out to you and price waterhouse cooper's conclusion on the council's governance framework was then a framework for governance is embraced and the strategy and the strategic direction of the council is clearly defined and understood by members and officers so that primarily was the overall conclusion of the report okay maybe we can go back to pwc to see if there's any issue with them if we do make it public because i i get where you're coming from counseling because if that can help give not just reassurance to members but the public could get some of that reassurance it would be helpful too yes i agree i think there is obviously a huge amount of concern um and it goes beyond private eye but locally there's a huge amount of concern that has been voiced in a number of different mediums that the council are investing in appropriately and also that the debt that the council have is um is not manageable so if if that could be um shared with us i think and also with the warrington public i think that would be very very useful and to try and away some of the concerns that people have sure if i can just add if that's okay clearly um with the council it is subject to freedom of information that requirements so any work pwc and do is subject to that requirement and therefore they should be able to provide at the very least a redacted port report that goes into the public domain okay then you have a chat with them see what they want to do but either way it'll be published to members yes okay thanks for that andrew are we okay now with this is many more on this one yes please chairman yeah can i just come back with with one other point um we're talking about sort of magazines and what's in the public domain i mean there was a something on the in the sit for a magazine recently in the context of the sort of pwlb changing their rates and i quote from it the announcement of the new rate that's by pwlb led to the uk municipal bonds agency abandoning a planned eight-year sterling issuance with willing to borrow a council in the midst of its marketing to potential investors now i just wonder what implications this has for what we're doing or what we want to do in the future because i know i think when i questioned the pwm the rate change at the last meeting i think the municipal bond agency was seen as an alternative way of doing it but i was concerned at the time that was against the spirit of what the government rightly or warrantly wrongly wanted us to do so just you know interested to know what the comment on that is please yes thank you councillor um i think in terms of the wording of how that was released it was um it was slightly unfortunate it was actually warrington ourselves that pulled the plug on that issue and we decided um having having spent a week talking to a number of city institutions and looking for them to give us offers around that bond that we were potentially going to do it became quite clear from a financial value for money point of view there was no benefit in going with a municipal bonds agency any longer the pwlb that drop-in rate that came through means that the things that we have in line within our existing capital programme um we will continue to check whether it's right but at the moment it appears that pwlb is the cheaper form of us being able to carry on with our capital programme and there are some changes within the rules around pwlb particularly the not investing into property purely for yield and not outside of our economic area and at the moment at the moment we have no plans to invest into property or yield outside of our economic area so that doesn't prevent us proceeding with what we're expecting to do with pwlb borrowing and the drop in interest rate means that there's extra savings potentially available on some of the schemes that we're looking at that are much much nearer or perhaps really related to some of the renewable energy schemes that we're looking at um that will produce a better return for the council as well as helping meet some of those other policy objectives such as housing or climate change that we're trying so much to do towards okay yeah no thank you for that lintiness i'm i'm pleased to so detect a sort of a different change of emphasis in what we're trying to do with this money in the future so that's good and right i'm sure the problem will go down well with the public as well thank you any more on that okay we're happy to note the recommendations take that as a yes the item seven officer governance group thank you chair i'll take this report um it just briefs committee on the work undertaken by the office of governance group during the year so far and it also provides some assurance around how the governance arrangements have been amended and applied and how service provisions continue to be managed during the pandemic and i've noted at section four there have been quite a lot of meetings so far during the year and i think the group's view here was they wanted some regular updates and assurance around the impact of the pandemic on on the council's governance arrangements um we've talked about the group um look at the improvement action plan from the annual governance statement over the last year and we get updates on a regular basis or on that action plan obviously one of the key areas is around the pandemic so i've just put some a paragraph there at 5.2 um and then at 5.3 as i noted um the group did want some extra assurance around how things have been amended how things then go back to normal governance arrangements and so on um so what we the group decided to do was ask all of the directorates to complete an adapted form of the self-assessment self-assessment exercise that's done on an annual basis and we amended that to ask specific questions around response to the pandemic and that was taken back through each directorate management team and then returned through and discussed at the governance group and also it's in your leadership team so we've got some quite strong evidence there for the um base of the assurance framework for 2021 and looking obviously at the current lockdown the continuation of that those amended arrangements obviously continue to be in place another key area around that at 5.4 is obviously disaster recovery and business continuity and the way the council's been able to maintain maintain its business during during the pandemic so there's been um assurance around um plans for business continuity and that critical services you know can carry on as part of this um i think the other thing to draw your attention to then there's there's information there against each of the areas in the ags and i think the only other thing to draw your attention to is that that is an ongoing process we've got another meeting scheduled in a couple of weeks time we've also got some work going on around governance structures in the council um so there is a lot of work underway this this year by this group uh to provide assurance through to yourselves uh happy to take any questions okay thanks gene are there any comments or questions please and could i ask a general question 5.6 regarding the annual accounts and where they're up to with grant thornton and what progress you're making sure do you want me to answer that question i appreciate it we've got the next item is for external audits so yeah do you want to leave it's next to the item i'll answer your question on the next item thank you any others okay thanks for that and the next item is could you risk management yes thanks chair i'll take the report on risk management um it shows you the risk management and insurance activity for the first six months of this financial year um at 4.1 we've noted there that you've also got the strategic risk register attached to this reported appendix one and you've got a summary there in figure one as a standard report that comes to you to show movement on risks and so on at 4.3 we've pointed out that the significant risk continued to be those areas reported there i think these these come to you each time i think that these major risks sort of don't really change at this strategic level and then some paragraphs underneath this just to pull out some of the the issues around some of the risks in the risk register so i've noted at paragraph 4.6 in with regards to pandemic um during quarter one we were looking potentially at reducing the um impact rating it was reduced down to four but obviously with lockdown two coming along and obviously the continued winter winter issues that's gone up again and it's been increased again to a 25 that one um 4.7 the risk of cyber attack still remains really significant obviously now so reliant on technology that allows everyone you know most people to work from home and meetings to go ahead and so the training is really critical ict of following up on the mandatory training that's been rolled out for both officers and members there and making sure all business critical systems would carry on services if they did have an attack if they didn't have access to those systems uh to really think that through um at 4.10 um we've kept on the risk around corporate governance such a huge area and such a lot going on with the pandemic and the changes in that are coming through with brexit lots of different legislation that has to be kept on top of so that stays as a high risk on there um at 4.11 we've looked at the definition for strategic risk 24 which is around management of all the strategic investment portfolio and making sure the monitoring and the governance arrangements are are in place um at 4.13 we just noted that there are two new risks that have come onto the risk register during quarter two um strategic risk 25 is specifically around the council's leisure library and lifestyle provider and 26 is around the challenges uh with maintaining the statutory provision of services for children with the ehc plans in place especially where those children are required to isolate a 4.4 team will recognize the new corporate strategist so there will be work to look at potential further risks attached to the objectives and that is a piece of work that will will need to be done during this next year um and then at 4.4 15 i just wanted to point out the risks around delivering health inequalities we have that on the strategic risk register split out across the directorates and we are looking at how that is reported that risk and also we've still got the internal audit reporting draft so trying to pull everything together there and really think through the risks attached to that but obviously there's a lot of other work that's taking up the attention of our public health colleagues and just the other thing is 4.19 about health and safety and there have been some concerns raised around the you know increasing risks around the capacity for officers to manage the health and safety responsibilities in in line with everything else to do with the pandemic and that's particularly acute in adult social care um and just overall at 4.20 is the whole impact on workforce and obviously as we go into this lockdown at this time of year a huge impact on the on the workforce as we know um lots of additional risks around you know responding to the pandemic continued response to the revised arrangements under brexit so the whole impact um for workforce is huge and it's a huge risk um insurance activity at section five gives you the insurance claims activity for the first six months of the year and you've got the table there at figure three we had 214 closed during the first six months and then we've just given you a summary there of the new claims that have been reported in the first six months and at 5.6 we've just noted that there was a real hike in school travel related claims during the first six months because obviously there's a lot of council trips um but we've not really seen any other real noticeable changes to the typical pattern of claim activity which probably is a bit unusual really when we think about the six month period and section six we've just put a paragraph around you in emerging issues obviously as i say continued significant financial impact of kobe 19 and what that mean will will mean for budget setting over the next year and obviously for the media um and then obviously the risks attached to brexit as well i'll keep coming back to the the same key issues really happy to take any questions chair thanks do you have any comments or questions please um was the travel arrangements around the same time that we changed the policy for children with special needs not being taxed from 16 to 18 years um i think paragraph 5.6 is talking about specific sort of trips they wouldn't give us a contractual refund i think there was quite a lot of argument going on there about did you just feel that that's just fine i just know that there was issues with children with special needs taxes being stopped it was it was an issue for a lot of us as counselors with complaints but i thought maybe that was linked to it sorry if it wasn't okay for three recommendations they happy to adopt them and well again i'll take that as a yes okay was my previous question sorry chair was my previous question going to be answered in this section so it might be worth hearing from the excuse me the council's thoughts on on the governance and and risk relating to its investments uh danny is danny there and the work of the annual accounts was that was relating to the question previously so yes so what was the question are we dealing with the question on the annual accounts the council's post yeah yeah well i asked the question previously and i was wondering what the um in light of the the um the risks that we've just discussed um where the annual accounts sit and um in light of the financial position and um if you have a thought on the on the counts church did you meet once did i win or do you want to deal with it oh well i think i'll i'll try and pick it up first of all danny um so i was i was struggling to follow the question in light of the context of this report counselor so but i wrote or just something that i remembered that you'd asked it in light of a previous report yeah i was going to be answered in this section i understood yeah and i think i'd confused myself that when chair said we'd pick it up later it was going to be under the external auditor's update that's what i my point of view on the external audit um we do still have issues with the 2017-18 accounts um there are probably three or four outstanding issues relating to that so although we've got the objection resolved we still have an outstanding issue relating to how the council represents our um our valuation of our investment into redwood bank um we have attempted a couple of ways of dealing with that neither of which so far had been agreed by grant thornton um i have i've agreed part of a way forward with grant thornton just before christmas um and we've got a call with grant thornton including pwc from their banking division and now assisting us on that piece of work and we've got a call with them i think andrew it's early next week next tuesday and we hope from that we can then agree between our advisors in pwc and grant thornton's banking specialists exactly how we need to value the bank into our accounts i personally still don't think it's going to be materially different because at that stage of the investment it was a much smaller investment um but i think we we need to await the outcome of that that piece of work which pwc think they can turn around quite quickly once they know exactly what it is they're being asked to do and we do still have a couple of other issues i think particularly um i know unfortunately within andy's team he's he's not had all of his team here all of the time that's delayed some work around plant and equipment which is now being um looked at by some external advisors um for grant bonsan uh and we still have an issue um it's not just an issue for warrington um it's actually an issue across all of the cheshire authorities with um with pension fund and some figures that the pension fund have have supplied to us which i think between us the pension fund grant thornton we still haven't quite got to the bottom of what the error is there but it's affected not just us but the other other cheshire authorities as well i think off the top of my head that's probably the issues that are left outstanding which does mean that if we can complete those um and give that information as necessary that we're probably not that far off and hopefully that andrew would agree with me that we're not that far off agreeing the 2017-18 accounts thank you i can't hear anymore we can hear you and andrew asked if he could um add to it chair right yeah okay i can hear him say that thanks sure so um so yeah in our degree with lincoln's assessment of where the audits are um we have um the the were issues with 1718 hold it in the passage of time um a day to the audit somewhat and so we have had to do we are having to do some additional work around evaluation of london buildings we've had to go through the file and to update all the evidence given that um there will be more of the evidence to obtain and given that time has has passed significantly so we've had to do that and the other issue which i may mention in the past the fact that i've taken over from robin due to his long-term absence has led some more review points the good news is that we have largely done if you like the update of order evidence and we've addressed most of those review points but as linton did indicate there are a few technical issues that we're still trying to get to the bottom of um i wouldn't want to put a time scale on things because uh i i've made that mistake in the past but substantially the audit is complete it is these technical issues that need to be resolved and that once we get to that stage we should be able to move fairly swiftly what towards completion um but i guess what i can't do is is put time score on how long it would take to resolve some of these technical issues um the pension one is probably the best example of that in that we need the information and it's not just uh aussie the council are struggling to get that information and together to quantify the the size of the issue so the audit will take as long as it takes in order to do it to sufficient quality um but it it linton is right it is largely just some um technical issues that we need to resolve okay move on to next report uh external auditor's progress report that's you andrew please uh thanks cheer i mean i said i've probably updated um members just just then in terms of in terms of the 1718 audit and of course we have got the 1819 audit on on on the go to albeit what we've decided agreed with lincoln is that we'll try to concentrate on 1780 and get that signed off and then move on to the 1819 audit um as i've previously indicated there is less to do um to um get the 1819 audit from where it is now to completion and the only complicating factor in that is the fact that we do have an 1819 objection um which we still need to conclude upon and again that relates to redwood bank um we there is still some information that we need um in order to complete that review and that information largely sits with the bank and i have spoken to the bank um in regards to that um i had hoped to get some of that information or it had been promised before and christmas i have not yet received that and um will be chasing up the bank and to try and get all of that information the the the complicating factor around that the reason why i mention it is obviously it we do need to conclude that objection before we can before we can actually conclude the accounts and as you know from previous experience there's obviously a process that needs to be go go through in time obviously it does take an element of time to get through that process so and that that might complicate things on 1819 but the good news is that there is less work to do um in order to uh to conclude the audit um the only real tech outstanding technical issue um relating to 1819 relates to ifrs nine um where we have had um some um quite a long conversation with finance team around the the accounting and disclosures around that and we're not quite to the bottom of that but hopefully we can resolve that one fairly quickly um would the differences of opinion about mrp uh affect standing off of the accounts or is that for a future discussion that that is more real less relevant for 1718 um because the guidance didn't come into play until the first of april 2019 however um it will complicate the 1819 audit because it does it does have consequences for our vfn conclusion okay so i think the committee will want to report on the wise wherefores mrp probably for february or march and we've actually got training chair and with this coming up and we've got we've gone member training game you all should have received an invite so we brought in probably the best qualified expert in the land and to come and give member training to you there's two sessions organized for members on the 16th of february one or two o'clock and one and um one at six o'clock in the evening so that that should give you um about all the information you need an mrp and hopefully it should be timely as well with them council agreeing the mrp policy in march then we'll have it for the february sorry for the march meeting can you advise the whoever's doing the training that the committee will be very interested in mrp we certainly yeah yeah and and did sure yeah he's already been advised that that's the reason we're doing the training so yeah yeah okay then um [Music] anything else on on andrew's report yes please jim you're gonna uh yeah i mean clearly i mean one of you i mean there's several issues around is this difference of view about sort of the valuation of redwood bank now obviously what we seem to be doing we're using pwc as our advisor which is obviously going to cost us sort of more money and i don't know whether this is negotiation i mean i don't know how and i also don't really understand the issue but i mean how important is this i mean if if say the council conceded this and said okay gee grant thornton you're right on this what's the downside for us apart from a sort of a matter of principle that we don't want to be you know demonstrated perhaps we've done something wrong in the past but it seems to me this one it's one of the key things that's holding it up and it's costing money and i don't exactly know for what purpose um we're having this sort of debate discussion negotiation whatever you want to call it so it's a question both for linton and andrew really lincoln do you want me to go first on on that to give the audit view and so i think i thought first because it's the question i asked you i think a few months ago andy yeah yeah absolutely so the the issue we have is that we do not know whether um this issue is material or not and to the to the to the council's account so the the question that we are posing to the council is you should do an assessment of the valuation of the options that the the council had in the bank and prove to us that it's not material and that you don't need to account for it at the moment we don't have that assessment and that evidence so without it um we there's only really kind of two things that we can well there's only one other route that we can do and which would be effectively to get my own experts in to do a bank evaluation and then value the options if they came back and said this is material but then the council refused to do anything about it i would have no option but to qualify the council's accounts on this particular matter um alternatively and the council could at that point decide to then appoint its own expert um to then get its own independent valuation um and and do which effectively is what it's doing now so ultimately um really there's only really two options unfortunately for the council because it needs to provide us with the evidence around this is to is to get its own expert to do the valuation or it's to potentially um get a you know potentially it could be getting a qualifying case the only other um the only other real circumstance um where that we could get around this is is obviously we get our experts in and they they declare it not material but that isn't typically what we would do um as auditors because the onus really is upon is upon the authority because it's their accounts to prepare the accounts and provide the provide the assessment of the the estimates that go into that and unfortunately on this particular one we don't we don't have the evidence to to conclude that it's not material so hopefully it is quite a complex matter and quite complex accounting but hopefully i've at least tried to explain that in latin terms what this means from an audit point of view hope hope for that answers your question okay thanks well i'm interested in it no lincoln's views about why this is perhaps so important to us and if we conceded a thing and i'm not suggesting we should necessarily do that what are the implications and we get the audit done rather more quickly but what's the downside for the council if we said okay we've got this wrong there isn't the downside i think we we took the way we valued it um initially was at what we'd invested into it and there was there's been an issue over what was particularly what was left to invest and how you value the difference between what we had invested and what we planned to invest at later stages so actually in in the later years it's not even an issue because by then we've invested the full 30 million the issue is over the valuation between the 10 million and still the opportunity to invest the further 20 million at that stage so it's only an issue in the 2017-18 accounts um i guess and is it however i say this is it sounds kind of critical in one way or another i think it wasn't helped because of the objection on redwood bank which delayed other issues linked to redwood so this item got kind of pushed further and further back and that meant it was probably quite late on that we even realized that there was this is an issue um at which point and that maybe what we should have done at that point which is probably now 12 months ago is gone straight to pwc ourselves and asked for them to be able to provide the independent view in order to be able to submit that either way i think that works out cheaper for the council to get pwc to do it than in effect for grant thornton to do something on our behalf which andy would have to then pick up a cost for outside of the council's control and it would come back as a cost as part of our audit so i'd rather we were in control and did it through our own framework um in terms of the price that pwc are doing it for us okay thank you would it be fair to summarize this that pricewaterhouse are undertaking an independent review whatever their decision both sides will abide by their conclusion no ron thornton still need to assess what pwc come back with but at least i'm then happier standing behind that i've got an expert telling me what exactly the way that we should do it well put it this way suppose grant thought supposed price courthouse said that grand thought on the right i'm sure grant thornton would agree with it ultimately we would be asking them to do an assess evaluation essentially is what we're um we once we receive that valuation um my expert within gt will be looking at that look at the the approach taken which we are agreeing upfront so hopefully we can get that sorted before they pwc start work um but in terms of the actual valuation my expert will review that and make sure he's happy with that so it will not be just simply a case of um agreeing with whatever answer pwc come up with my my my own value will be looking at it independently and providing me advice on whether they agree that the valuation is reasonable so we it to be honest i have no particular view on what the answer should be um so i don't think there will ever be a case of i agree or disagree with pwc but i will obviously be relying upon my own expert to uh to get a view on that so again the clarification price waterhouse are not acting in the role of arbitrator as the council's expert yeah well not as arbitrators might want to make that complaint yeah that that's that's that's true church yeah parisher for may we've got just checking i'm right on this and it may well not be uh we've taken all sorts of advice we've got price water coopers involved there's a possibility that we ask grant thought to do something else but obviously the more people you ask the more different views you like to get if in the end grant grant thornton had to issue a qualified a qualifier to the accounts is there any serious impact on that or is it just something we'd say well we've you know accept that because you know otherwise we they and we're going to spend a lot more time just dragging the whole thing out i think i'm asking linton about the impact of qualified accounts yeah for me it'd be very serious if they had to qualify our accounts and perhaps for warrington more serious than for a number of authorities given that we have a public um credit rating it could have a serious impact on us being able to go to the markets to borrow money through bonds and have a very negative impact on our credit rating we don't want to get there and i i don't believe we will get there we just need to come to an agreement on this particular issue and i as i say i still don't believe it's material but let's let pwc do their piece of work if it's different and if grant thornton don't agree with it it may well be that i just then say well we then agree with grant thornton's approach because at the end of the day doesn't really make much odds in our accounts in 1718 because it undoes itself as part of the further investment into later years anyway but we do have to get 1718 correct okay okay thank you anything more on andrew's report okay thanks andrew we go on to the final action which the work program has anybody any comments about the work program you will be uh getting noticed i think february the 16th is the first of many proposed training programs that we've deferred uh pending elections but uh as we discussed earlier in the week we don't know when the elections are gonna be so we'll just have to proceed as planned uh and just put it behind us and just ignore the fact that the elections may or may not take place and just proceed as we can and then hopefully the trade will so to speak training the trainers uh that we will give them the questions excited so to speak and then they can use that for when the next council is convened otherwise nothing would get done at all so are there any comments on the work program any additions that people would like to make no then thank you members and officers our work here is done i bid you all good night