Agenda item

Report of the External Auditors, Grant Thornton.

Members received a report of the External Auditors (Grant Thornton) relative to the City Fund audit plan.

The Chairman asked how prevalent fraud at this level was for local authority schemes. In reply, officers from Grant Thornton said that there were two types of fraud: extraction fraud and expenditure fraud. The former, where an individual would defraud the local authority for personal gain, was fairly common but the material scale was relatively low. In contrast, fraudulent recognition of expenditure and manipulation of financial position was unusual in a local authority context, as the nature of their funding and the available reserves meant that slight variances in budget spending were generally not an issue as long as the reserves remained strong. When it was seen, it was normally in local authorities whose reserves were running down. They would not expect to see it in a local authority, and did not expect to see it at the City Corporation.

RESOLVED, that – the report be received and its contents noted.