CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 2 20/04/2021

Title: ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ EXTERN­AL AUDIT PLAN

Pre­pared by: JOHN BOYD, GRANT THORNTON

Pur­pose

This paper presents the final plan for the audit of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ annu­al report and accounts.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Agree the final extern­al audit plan for the extern­al audit of the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ annu­al report and accounts; b) Agree the fee for the audit as set out in the plan; and c) Con­sider the man­age­ment responses provided to the extern­al aud­it­or to sup­port their audit plan­ning as sum­mar­ised in Annex 2 and high­light any aspects of these responses which are not con­sist­ent with mem­bers’ understanding.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. At the Feb­ru­ary Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee, John Boyd for Grant Thornton noted that their audit plan was in draft sub­ject to com­ple­tion of some of our audit pro­ced­ures. John agreed to share the final plan upon com­ple­tion of these pro­ced­ures, which is now the case. The final extern­al audit plan is presen­ted in full at Annex I to this paper.

2. There have been no sig­ni­fic­ant changes to the plan, with the only update being the inclu­sion of the agreed audit fee. For the ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ audit this has been retained at the baseline fee set by Audit Scot­land with no pro­posed uplift.

3. This paper also presents a sum­mary of the responses received from Man­age­ment that have informed Grant Thornton’s audit plan­ning, as set out at Annex 2. Under Inter­na­tion­al Stand­ards on Audit­ing (UK), aud­it­ors have spe­cif­ic respons­ib­il­it­ies to com­mu­nic­ate with the Audit Com­mit­tee. This two-way com­mu­nic­a­tion assists both the aud­it­or and the Audit Com­mit­tee in under­stand­ing mat­ters relat­ing to the audit and devel­op­ing a con­struct­ive work­ing rela­tion­ship. It also enables the aud­it­or to obtain inform­a­tion rel­ev­ant to the audit from the Audit Com­mit­tee and sup­ports Com­mit­tee in ful­filling its respons­ib­il­it­ies in rela­tion to the fin­an­cial report­ing pro­cess. The extern­al aud­it­ors have there­fore shared the sum­mary of Man­age­ment responses and ask mem­bers if there are any areas that are not con­sist­ent with their own know­ledge and understanding.

Dav­id Cameron 7 April 2021 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk