Agenda item

Trafod adroddiad y Trysorydd 

The Head of Finance – Education and Financial Reporting explained to Members of the Joint Committee that this is an annual report that comes before the committee each year.

 The Officer continued to explain that there are 3 recommendations to the report:

1.    Approve the earmarked reserve request set out at 3.2.

2.    Note the draft Statement of Accounts for the Central South Consortium for the year-ending 31st March 2021 (Appendix 1) and the draft outturn position for the year (Section 4 – Table 1).

3.    Approve the 2020/21 Annual Governance Statement (as incorporated within the draft 2020/21 Statement of Accounts

 The Head of Finance – Education and Finical Reporting highlighted Firstly the earmarked reserve request:

As reported in the March JC, it is requested that Members approve the request to carry forward the existing earmarked reserve of £200k into the new financial year to support re-modelling of the service in the medium term.

In addition there remains a balance of £6k on the earmarked reserve to support the delivery of a sensory project. It is also requested to carry this forward into the next financial year, 21/22 to fund the continuation of the project.

The Officer continued and explained that the second recommendation is to note the draft unaudited Statement of Accounts for 2020/21 which are at Appendix 1. These are produced in line with CIPFA’s Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting and also in line with the Accounts and Audit Wales regulations. These statutory accounts will now be subject to external audit as reported in the Audit Plan that was presented to this committee in March. And following that audit, the final version of the Statement of Accounts, amended for any audit recommendations, will come back to JC for approval. 

I would like to draw Members attention to the outturn position at table 1 in paragraph 4.7 of the covering report. This shows a small surplus of £9k which will hopefully provide members with assurance of the stability of the financial position and the robust financial management in the consortium.

The final recommendation of the report is to approve the Annual Governance Statement which is incorporated into the Statement of Accounts at Appendix 1 from page 41.

The AGS is drafted in line with the requirements of a CIPFA document called “Delivering Good Governance in Local Government”.

As detailed in section 6 of the AGS, following an evidence based review of governance arrangements, the conclusions are that the governance arrangements in Central South Consortium remain effective. Notwithstanding this view that the arrangements remain effective, it is inevitable that there are areas where improvements are required. These have been agreed by management and are set out in section 7. Progress on the required improvements will be reported to JC during the course of the year.

Lastly, Members will recall at the last Joint Committee, the previous Annual Governance Statement progress was reported. There were 4 proposals for improvement, 3 of the recommendations were completed and 1 was in progress, partly implemented. This is at Appendix A on page 67 of the document.

Members thanked the Officer for the detailed report and RESOLVED to:

Ø  Approve the earmarked reserve request set out at 3.2.

Ø  Note the draft Statement of Accounts for the Central South Consortium for year- ending 31^st March 2021 (Appendix 1) and the draft outturn position for the year ( Section4 – Table 1); and

Ø  Approve the 2020/21 Annual Governance Statement ( as incorporated within the draft 2020/21 Statement of Accounts)