Agenda item
Report from Vice-Chair of Audit Committee
To receive any report in accordance with Standing Order 41A.
Minutes:
Councillor A Choudry, Vice-Chair to the Council’s Audit Committee, thanked the Council for agreeing to change the Constitution to enable the voice of the Audit Committee to be heard at Council meetings.
He said that the work of the Audit Committee was often perceived as very technical and unglamorous with a bunch of bean counters going on to the Audit Committee and just looking at numbers. He said that this was not so and that whilst not all Members of the Committee were accountants, there were a number of people who were crucial and who played a big role in grilling some of the people, including KPMG, Price Water House and some of the Officers, which he felt was an important role of the Committee and that it was important that some of the issues the Committee discussed there got reported to Council. In addition to this, he said, some of the crucial decisions taken by the Audit Committee in terms of finance e.g. the treasury element of this, was a highly complicated matter that he thought the Committee needed to discuss. He said that the Committee did spend an enormous amount of time doing some of those things and seeing how this money was invested and to get a better return for it. Councillor Choudry said that the Committee also looked at things such as the arrangement for the external audit work and what work the Committee needed to do, why, when and how the Committee reported it and received feedback. Over the period of the last year or so, Councillor Choudry said that the Committee had considered the shared costs side of things that the Council was perhaps were branching out to other boroughs and making sure that it was getting synergy benefit from other authorities. He said that the Committee was of the opinion that it was not happening for Brent so it took a decisive decision to take that back in-house and he was very proud and very pleased that people from all parties came to help the Committee and to make that decision. We don’t play politics in the Audit Committee – we play a serious role in making sure what is best for Brent actually is delivered and it happens all the time. Councillor Choudry said that the Committee had also looked at the statutory account, which was a very important part of the Committee’s work. Brent was, he said, generally transparent and he believed it did an enormous amount of work here in Brent and he thought it was good that the Council did and that it continue to do that. Councillor Choudry said that the cooperation it had amongst colleagues was good but there was concern where the Council had to appoint an individual onto the Audit Committee, these individuals were appointed for one year and maybe, he said, there was the need to reappraise the Council’s approach going forward and maybe there was a need to have it for a longer period to allow for consistency and to provide a better, balanced approach to the work of the Committee. Councillor Choudry said he was personally reassured, as normally the Chair would present these reports but because the Committee had an independent chair, he had been tasked to say things here and he was very proud and pleased that the Audit Committee had been given this opportunity.