Agenda item - Chair's Communications

32.1    The Chair provided the following communications:

On our agenda today, we will consider the External Auditors audit findings report developed from their audit of the council’s financial statements. These findings, and the External Auditors recommendations, will in turn help inform our consideration in offering our approval to the audited Statement of Accounts for 2024/25 and the Letter of Representation.

It had been hoped we would also be able to consider the External Auditors Value For Money report at this meeting. You would have noted in the reports that it's unfortunately not been possible to conclude that work yet and so that will come for our meeting in January.

Members will be reminded by the minutes of our September meeting, that we called for a report of the draft budget to come to our next meeting in January. So along with the VFM report I think this will give us a timely understanding of the context the budget and also the proposals being drafted. I think we have already asked the councillor, Jacob Taylor, as finance lead, to attend that meeting to inform. But I'd just like to reaffirm that invitation, which I think is agreeable.

On our agenda today we also have our regular quarterly progress report on Internal Audit and Counter Fraud and also one on embracing an updated CIPFA code of practice.

I’m pleased to welcome Councillor Allen, Cabinet member for Customer Services and Public Realm, who is here to help us with both those items, and I’m sure more generally too. Welcome Jacob.

A number of our reports are quite lengthy and detailed, so I would ask members to quote page references when asking questions or making points as this will help officers and myself to ensure you receive a proper response.