Issue - meetings

The committee is requested to formally adopt the amendments to the Accounting Policies for the financial year ended 31 March 2017 and shown in Appendix 1.

The committee considered the report in the agenda (copy attached to the official minutes).

Mr Catlow introduced the report, stating that there was an opportunity, before the accounts were prepared, to consider the accounting policies which drive the presentation of those accounts. There were a few changes in the Local Authorities Code of Accounting Practice as a result of the “Telling the Story” review and recognition from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) that local authority accounts were not easily readable and a number of other changes detailed in the report. He added the Leaders portfolio to the list of the reporting costs of service provision for 2016-17.

Mr Catlow asked the Committee to consider if the Expenditure and Funding Analysis (EFA) should be positioned in the accounts at Note 5, immediately after the Council’s accounting policies, critical judgements and descriptions

. This allowed readers of the accounts to assess the information contained in this new statement whilst fully aware of the framework within which the figures in the EFA had been prepared.

Mr Hobbs asked whether Mr Catlow was happy that the council had the granularity of the data right to allow extrapolation of different segments of the data for the purposes of comparison and whether extra work was now required now to allow the council to achieve that granularity. Mr Catlow replied that it would be possible to answer a question on how much a service cost and how it compared to others. The council had considered that it wanted to be able to review costs, taking into account service restructuring, shared services, etc. The coding had not actually changed the underlying data in the financial ledger. Mrs Belenger added that the finance system allowed us to cut our data up to 99 ways with different reporting structures. We have a portfolio structure, a service structure and we also have the Service Reporting Code of Practice (SeRCOP). It takes a bit of time to reorganise data into different extrapolations but we are able to do so with the finance systems. 

RESOLVED

1)          That the Council’s existing accounting policies be approved as an appropriate basis to prepare the 2016-17 financial statements.

2)          That the impact of the implementation of a revised Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement (CIES), Movement in Reserves Statement (MIRS) and the new Expenditure and Funding Analysis (EFA) be noted.

3)          That the revised presentation of the Council’s expenditure of its services within the CIES be noted.

4)          That the proposed placement of the new EFA note gave sufficient prominence to this new information within the Council’s statement of accounts.

5)          That the Leader’s portfolio be added to the list of the reporting costs of service provision for 2016-17.