The purpose of this report was to submit to the Committee one report – namely, the Bridgend County Borough Council Outline Audit Plan 2023 (Appendix A) - from Audit Wales.

The Outline Audit Plan specified the statutory responsibilities of the external

Auditor and set out details of the audit team and key dates for delivering the team’s activities and planned outputs.

A Detailed Audit Plan will be issued in July 2023 following the completion of planning work.

In addition to work on financial statements, there will be Performance audit work on Assurance and Risk Assessment, local work on Highways and Transport, and two thematic reviews on commissioning and

contract management and financial sustainability in local government.

The fee scheme for the year was published in January 2023. This sets out fee rates and also highlights the impact of the revised auditing standard ISA 315 on financial audit. More details of the revised auditing standard and what it means for the work undertaken by Audit Wales is set out in Appendix 1.

Members drew attention to a couple of issues, namely: how choices were made on what to focus on, and whether there might be savings in the long-term if there is more reliance on technology to carry out audit work.

In response, a representative from Audit Wales discussed the rigorous and robust assurance and risk assessment process they undertook to produce their plan for the year.

In response to the issue about fees and technology, a representative from Audit Wales indicated that technology might facilitate changes in fee schemes over the long-term. He indicated, for example, that they were trying to promote the use of data analytics, so applying analytical techniques to the Ledger. This could help auditors get through the audit a bit quicker because it can assimilate and arrange data in a far better way than through spreadsheets.

The Chairperson drew attention to the fact that fees were always going up and it was clear that this year it is likely there will be an inflationary increase in the fee of 5% and an additional cost of 10% and this was happening when there was a local government settlement of 7% and service delivery was extremely difficult in most local authorities in Wales.

In response to this, a Member asked how much we paid now per year and what would it be with an additional 15% on top?

The Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change indicated she would circulate the figure to Members.

RESOLVED:

The Committee noted the Audit Wales Governance & Audit Committee Report at Appendix A.