Issue - meetings

To receive and consider the 2021/22 Statement of Accounts and recommend them to Council for approval.

The Committee received a report from Virginia Rennie (Strategic Finance Manager) which presented the County Council Statement of Accounts for 2021/22 for consideration.  The report requested that, if content, the Committee recommend them to Council for approval, highlighting any issues they wished to bring to Council’s attention.

The Statement of Accounts was attached at Appendix A to the report, which explained the key features of the primary statements and notes that made up the statement of accounts.

Virginia Rennie introduced the report which she recognised included a lot of technical information.  She signposted Members to the narrative statement in the report and thanked officers for their input and hard work. 

The Chair addressed Virginia Rennie and asked her to pass the Committee’s gratitude on to the team.  In response to a query, Rob Powell advised that the papers had been in the public domain since the agenda for this meeting was published a week ago. The draft accounts were published in July 2022 for public inspection.

Councillor Gifford felt that it was a good set of accounts which was readable and understandable by the public.  It was noted that the draft accounts had been in the public domain since July and during the course of the meeting officers advised that the specific page on the Council’s website detailing the accounts had been accessed 386 times since July 2022.

Robert Zara recognised the assets of schools and noted that eight had chosen to take up academy status in 2021/22.  Officers confirmed that in these instances, the value of that asset was removed from the accounts.

Councillor Kettle noted with interest that Adult Social Care was no longer the most expensive revenue spend by service and had been superseded by Children and Education.  He queried if this was due to a change in volume or inflation but was advised that it may be down to the difference between gross and net spend.  Virginia Rennie provided further clarification on the figures involved which were gross expenditure, and the Children and Education figures combined the two service areas and also included school budgets. Adult Social Care remained the highest area of net revenue spend by Council service.

In response to a query from Robert Zara relating to the policies used in Treasury Management, Chris Norton (Strategy & Commissioning Manager - Treasury, Pension, Audit & Risk) advised that these were followed and updated regularly with the strategy being revisited on an annual basis.  Members noted the problems that some local authorities had experienced due to poor decision making in relation to borrowing and investing.  Andy Felton added that the governance process around investments was quite tight and due diligence followed.

Recommended the County Council Statement of Accounts 2021/22 to Council for approval.