Agenda and minutes

No apologies had been received. 

No interests were declared.  

These must be received no later than 12 noon on the fourth working day before the date of the meeting and must relate to the specific matter for which this meeting has been convened

No public questions were received.

Report of the Chief Executive

The Chief Executive introduced his report. He explained that at the Audit Committee meeting on 11 December 2014 it was reported that the findings of a review into the overspend on the Art Gallery and Museum Extension project from forensic auditors at Grant Thornton was being delayed because new information relating to expenditure on the project had recently been brought to his attention.

Since that meeting additional audit work has been carried out to investigate the new information to accurately determine the extent of the project overspend and to explore any failures which led to its late reporting. This was set out in the report from Grant Thornton and Mr Fred Brown of the company’s forensic and investigation team was in attendance to answer any questions from the committee.

The committee resolved at the last meeting that authority be delegated to the Director Resources to consider what further work should be undertaken by Grant Thornton and/or by Audit Cotswolds and to enter into contracts accordingly. Audit Cotswolds had produced a draft scoping document which was attached as an appendix to the report. Members were being asked to consider that document and make any amendments.

The chair welcomed Mr Brown to the meeting and asked him to introduce his report. Mr Brown explained that his brief had been to investigate the matter in some depth to try and identify what went wrong and identify lessons learned for the future. He explained the methodology they had used and invited questions.

Mr Brown was asked to outline what in his opinion had gone wrong in the process to establish whether this confirmed with members views after reading the report. In response he indicated that the recommendations in the report would give some indication of this.  One of the key issues was to do with the upward reporting within the council of construction and non-construction costs. In the case of the construction costs these were being flagged up in the Davis Langdon reports, including the use of the contingency funds, but this information was not being channelled up the council.  Non construction costs covering professional fees were also bound to increase as the project timescales were extended. He could not see any real evidence that the construction and non-construction costs could have been saved but the issue was in their reporting. The structure for the project set up seemed appropriate with suitable meetings in place to monitor progress but clearly examination of costs needed to be formulated into the agendas of these meetings. It appeared that the non-construction costs stopped being reported in 2011 and it was not clear who was responsible for reporting on them after that. He confirmed that this flow of information to the right people was a key factor however he also highlighted that the dynamic nature of projects did make this more complicated.

A member wished to establish Mr Brown’s experience of capital works projects and forensic audit. Mr Brown replied that he was not a quantity surveyor  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

There were no urgent items requiring a decision.

25 March 2015

The next meeting was scheduled for 25 March 2015. The chair advised Members that this already had a full agenda so he suggested an additional extraordinary meeting would be arranged before this.  The Democracy Officer would contact members in due course.