CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 5 06/12/2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

AUDIT & RISK COMMITTEE

FOR DECISION

Title: ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ EXTERN­AL AUDIT PLAN

Pre­pared by: JOANNE BROWN, JOHN BOYD, GRANT THORNTON

Pur­pose

This paper presents the extern­al auditor’s Annu­al Audit Plan for the audit of the ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ accounts. The plan sets out the key chal­lenges and risks faced by the Author­ity asso­ci­ated with this year-end audit review and the asso­ci­ated audit work that Grant Thornton pro­poses to undertake.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Con­sider the extern­al auditor’s Annu­al Audit Plan for the audit of the Authority’s ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ accounts and wider reviews of operations.

b) Agree, sub­ject to any com­ments, Grant Thornton’s Annu­al Audit Plan for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. Extern­al aud­it­ors in the pub­lic sec­tor give an inde­pend­ent opin­ion on the fin­an­cial state­ments. They are also required to provide a view on per­form­ance, reg­u­lar­ity and the organisation’s gov­ernance arrange­ments. In doing this, the aim of the extern­al aud­it­or is to sup­port improve­ment and account­ab­il­ity with­in the audited body.

2. Grant Thornton were appoin­ted by the Aud­it­or Gen­er­al as the Authority’s extern­al aud­it­or for five years in 2017. Their Annu­al Audit Plan for their audit work relat­ing to the Authority’s ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ oper­a­tion­al and fin­an­cial year, and the audit of the asso­ci­ated accounts, is set out in full at Annex 1 to this paper.

3. The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is invited to review the cov­er­age of the audit plan. Usu­ally on review of the plan the Audit Com­mit­tee is asked to agree the pro­posed audit fee. As yet Audit Scot­land have not issued any indic­at­ive fees for the ¹⁹⁄₂₀ audit cycle and the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee should be advised that, on the basis of pre­vi­ous years audit fees, the likely ¹⁹⁄₂₀ fee will be approx­im­ately £11,000. The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee will be asked to agree the ¹⁹⁄₂₀ fee at the next Com­mit­tee meet­ing in March 2020.

Danie Ral­ph, Fin­ance Manager 28 Novem­ber 2019 danielralph@​cairngorms.​co.​uk