Issue - meetings

The committee is requested to:

(a)        Consider this report and approve the council’s current accounting policies at Appendix A as an appropriate basis to prepare the Council’s 2017-18 financial statements.

(b)        Approve the principles set out in this report to review and refocus financial disclosures for 2017-18 to improve readability and increase impact.

The committee considered the report attached to the agenda.

Mr Catlow and Mr Cooper presented the report.

Mr Catlow advised that these policies were agreed before the financial statements were prepared. There had been no amendments to the policies but they had been edited for brevity. In future the accounts would be developed so that they only included information to make the information readable by the public.

The committee raised the following queries and received answers to questions as follows:

·         Do we understand our target groups and should we have consulted with our users? Local Authority stakeholders are difficult to define but could be users of public services across the area, major contractors we use and voluntary bodies we have a partnership with however it was acknowledged that local authority accounts were not widely read.

·         Concern re watering down accounts which would not enable stakeholders to see fraud or to identify financial difficulties being experienced. The standard set of information would still be included including disclosures below £1m. This should be enough information for a reader to be able to identify issues. The authority complied with the code of practice for disclosure; the accounts were open to the public during a set period of six weeks and they were entitled to ask questions of auditors. The reality was that the public did not take advantage of this transparency procedure.

·         With FOI powers could information be produced on a need to know basis? Under the transparency agenda we were obliged to disclose certain information all the time and this was included. The more information we included the more auditing was required.

·         Queried officer termination benefits.  This wording meant that if there was a new structure in place the affected posts would be identifiable and that a contractual commitment existed at the time the accounts were prepared.

·         Prior period adjustments. It was our policy to produce a note that this had happened.

·         Reinstate the fair values heading on page 92.

·         Requested the finance team to reinstate the printed Council Tax leaflet to go out with the annual Council Tax bill. The leaflet was available online but was unpopular with residents. Mrs Belenger was requested to consider from stakeholders’ perspective that the WSCC and Sussex Police leaflets were included but not our own. Mrs Belenger undertook to pass on that request to the relevant director.

RESOLVED

1) That the council’s current accounting policies at Appendix A be approved as an appropriate basis to prepare the Council’s 2017-18 financial statements.

2) That the principles set out in this report to review and refocus financial disclosures for 2017-18 to improve readability and increase impact be approved.