Antrim Civic Centre
Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council’s buildings have been valued at £214m, the Audit and Risk Committee has been told.
Councillors were advised at a recent committee meeting this property has decreased in value from £221.5m. They also heard that the council’s general fund remains at £7.2m.
Glengormley DUP Councillor Alison Bennington asked if a different company had been used for the valuation of council buildings and if they had reduced in value due to their age.
Richard Murray, head of finance, indicated that the same company, Land and Property Services, was used which had carried out an exercise based on market information.
“They use building control and surveyors’ index to ascertain the value of the asset. If an asset is a year older, then obviously there is an adjustment for the fact that it is a year older and therefore the value of the asset can decrease,” he explained.
Seamus Wade, from the Northern Ireland Audit Office, told the meeting in his report to those charged with governance 2023/24 (draft):
“The audit is now substantially complete. I am pleased to highlight at this point, we are looking at unqualified audit opinion without any modification. Effectively, that is a clean audit report.”
Mr Wade noted one of his findings was that 133 contracts worth £2.9m were awarded without competition during the financial year and on one occasion, approval to award a direct award contract was given three months after work had started.
“Ideally these processes would be completed before the contract is awarded,” he commented.
Sandra Cole, director of finance and governance, said:
“There are reasons why those direct awards were awarded the way they were. We will look at all the findings in the round and the recommendations and we will provide management responses to those recommendations and bring that back to the audit committee in December for members’ approval.”
Cllr Bennington stated:
“I am happy we are getting a report in December assuring us that matters in the report are going to be addressed.”
Providing an internal audit update, Paul Caulcutt, head of internal audit, noted a “security risk” in that the combination of a safe at a council premises in Antrim was recorded in procedure documentation which was available on a shared directory and available to members of staff.
He reported when this was highlighted, management took “immediate action to correct”. “We are content that the risks have now been mitigated,” he added.
Recently, the council’s chief executive Richard Baker told the Local Democracy Reporting Service:
”We are generally fiscally responsible. I do think we are being very financially prudent as an organisation. At the six-month point, we are within budget.”