The Audit and Standards Committee was scheduled to meet on Wednesday 3 December 2025 to discuss the Statement of Accounts for 2024-25, and to approve the minutes from the previous meeting. The meeting was scheduled to be held in person at the Brent Civic Centre¹, and was also scheduled to be available via live webcast.

Statement of Accounts 2024-25

The committee was scheduled to receive an update on the progress of the council's and Pension Fund's Statement of Accounts 2024-25. The Statement of Accounts 24-25 report was prepared by Minesh Patel, Corporate Director of Finance & Resources.

The Statement of Accounts 24-25 report noted that the Audit Committee has responsibility for considering issues raised by the external auditors as part of the process of approving the annual statement of accounts. The basis for this consideration is the report to those charged with governance also referred to as the ISA260 (Audit Findings Report)². The council's external auditors, Grant Thornton³, produce the report following completion of the audit of accounts. The report is intended to identify any changes to the accounts, unadjusted mis-statements or material weaknesses in controls identified during the audit work.

According to the report, at the time of writing, most of the key audit areas had been reviewed by Grant Thornton, with some awaiting review by their senior management. The main outstanding areas were Plant, Property & Equipment and Leases. The issues in both these areas are similar in that the council has experienced poor record keeping by service areas relating to these items in recent years, so these areas have required extensive review both at the preparation and audit stages for the 2024/25 accounts to ensure that they are materially correct.

The council has been working on an improvement plan to address the shortcomings of its records of assets since the completion of the audit of the 2023/24 Statement of Accounts. So far, this has focused on improving the records of those areas with the most material assets and issues, especially Assets under Construction and recently completed capital schemes. A second phase of these works has just started which is planned to address the remaining issues, such as ensuring that all property assets have the correct Universal Property Reference Number, reconciling the list of the council's assets back to the records held by the Land Registry on asset ownership, and ensuring that all areas of the council maintain adequate inventories of their assets as the council's constitution requires. Alongside this, Internal Audit has reviewed the Property department's Asset register and associated processes as this contains most of the council's non-housing assets, and will be making recommendations shortly.

The Statement of Accounts 24-25 report also noted that a series of 'backstop' dates were introduced by the government in 2024 as part of its plans to clear local authority audit backlogs. If the audit of the accounts cannot be completed before the backstop date then the auditor can issue a modified or disclaimed audit opinion. A disclaimer of opinion states that the auditor does not express an opinion on parts of the financial statements. For 2024/25, the backstop date is 27 February 2026.

As part of the accounts sign off process, Brent are required to issue a letter to the auditors that sets out the responsibilities and representations made by Brent to the auditor to confirm that certain matters have been undertaken and confirm the responsibilities of Brent to ensure there is no misunderstanding. The draft letters for the Council and Pension Fund are set out in Appendix A - Draft LB Brent Letter of representation and Appendix B - Draft Brent Pension Fund letter of representation.

The report stated that details of audit fees are set out in the Audit Findings Report. The fees as per the original audit plan are £545,235 and the additional fees incurred, primarily as a result of the additional work required on Plant, Property and Equipment, totals £19,000. Further fees may be incurred as part the audit of leases if additional work is required.

The Audit & Standards Committee was asked to:

• Delegate approval of the draft letters of representation to Grant Thornton for the council and Pension Fund to the Corporate Director of Finance & Resources, as set out in Appendix A - Draft LB Brent Letter of representation and Appendix B - Draft Brent Pension Fund letter of representation.
• Approve the final statement of accounts for 2024/25, subject to a written assurance being provided that all outstanding matters and adjustments contained in the Audit Findings report had been made. If there were any material adjustments required as a result of the final Audit Findings report being issued, these would be reported back to the committee
• Agree the audit fees for 2024/25, as set out in section 3.2.9 of this report.

Minutes from the previous meeting

The committee was scheduled to approve the minutes from the previous Audit and Standards Committee meeting held on the 16th July 2025 as a correct record.