BURY Council’s finances have been given a clean bill of health by accountants KPMG.

Audit committee members approved the final 2017/18 statement of accounts after KPMG’s Jerri Lewis presented a report summarising the firm’s findings.

Ms Lewis told councillors that, while there were still some minor matters outstanding, KPMG had completed audit work on all the major areas and expects to file an “unqualified opinion" by the July 31 deadline.

This means it believes the authority's financial statements fairly present the council's processes and its financial position.

However there were seven “key recommendations” made as a result of the external audit. None were classed as needing immediate action, but four were deemed as “issues that have an important effect on internal controls”.

The accounting policy for academy schools was highlighted as a particular future concern  by Ms Lewis.
She said: “Bury is quite a small borough and there are not that many academies in the borough at the moment, but given the current appetite for academies this is likely to change in the future, and we did notice that the way they are treated in the accounts was not in line with their accounting policies.”

She added: “There is no adjustment to be made, but it’s just raising the fact that, going forward academies are going to be more and more likely to be arising, so it’s a recommend to get the council’s policy aligned.”

Cllr Roy Walker, who described himself as “not a great fan” of academy schools said: “We’ve been criticised for our accounting policy not being aligned with their accounting policy and I assume they get theirs from the government. There are a lot of terrible things going on with academies up and down the country and I do think they need to be audited properly.”

He queried how the council would improve its inspection of academies and was assured by Andrew Baldwin, head of financial management, that a more detailed response to KPMG’s recommendations would be discussed at a future committee meeting.

Other recommendations included a direction for the council to carry out an annual review of users with access to its payroll system and journals that enable the processing of financial transactions.

Ms Lewis said that while KPMG did not find anything to suggest a “material error”, but had suggested some best practice “to tighten things up in future”

It was also found that the reconciliation between the fixed asset register and the general ledger was not reviewed at the end of the financial year,  and the business rates system was not up to date with the latest property numbers and rateable values.

The latter could result in the authority issuing incorrect invoices and being either under or overpaid by businesses.

Members of the committee also approved the council’s internal audit report, which found that work for 2017/18 was completed to a “satisfactory degree and acceptable standard” and that the authority had a “robust internal framework and effective governance arrangements”.