Finance Minutes 8th April 2024
Finance Committee meeting 8th April 2024
Attendees: Phil March (Chair); Chris Burgess; Gill Wilkinson; David Court Apologies: Jonathan Hughes
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Minutes of last meeting (4th March) approved
Action points from last meeting:
Zurich Insurance:
Fidelity insurance increased from £25,000 to £250,000 at no extra cost;
Damaged Flagpole claim accepted, £496.34 received;
see agenda item 6 below
Alwyn:
P45 and P60 forms have now been sent to Alwyn.
Memorial Hall charity:
Explanations of previous payments from the charity have been given to the Charity Commission without any issues;
Separate charity trustee meeting has been arranged for Tuesday 9th April;
It has not yet been possible to change the charity bank account to an interest-earning account. Still waiting for Sylvia to hand over ‘primary user’ status to DJC.
JH to research whether investment in the Public Sector Deposit Fund is appropriate for the Council. Suggest we include this in a future short
March transactions and bank reconciliations
Review of March transactions; also full year and final quarter bank reconciliations: these need to be physically checked at the Council meeting tomorrow (Chris volunteered);
Recommend payment of OVW 2024/25 subscripton;
DJC has reminded Conwy re unsent invoices for Xmas lights and Defibrillator installations.
Full year out-turn against Budget
Presented in new format as agreed at last meeting (attached)
There was an underspend of approx £9,000 against the notional budget (reminder: a proper budget was not produced for 2023/24).
Major divergences:
forecast
actual
under-/over-spend
Income
30100
33447
-3347
Elections
3600
1791
-1809
Clerk wages
5776
4241
-1535
Training
900
0
-900
Newsletter
820
0
-820
Website
600
0
-600
Skips
960
480
-480
Defibrillators
611
187
-424
Flagpoles
300
1139
839
-9076
The 2024/25 budget has been amended as follows:
was
now
opening cash balances
25246
34318
VAT reclaim
0
200
Website
100
600
Training
900
1800
Xmas lights
400
700
Defibrillators
535
800
Defib evening
0
75
closing cash balances
400
7700
Playground maintenance. We have still not agreed a budget for this - continue with agreed grant funding for cleaning and await news from Conwy Council.
Audit Timetable
Already circulated, accounting and governance reports need to be approved by council by 30th June and submitted to Audit Wales before 5th July.
2023/24 is a ‘basic’ audit; 2024/25 will be a full ‘transactional’ audit.
John Arthur Jones has agreed to act as internal auditor again this year. We need to have this approved in council and to send him a formal request.
Suggest we ask council to agree to pay for a more thorough review of our sytems and procedures later in the year.
Council insurance policy
Zurich are in the process of pricing up various options for the specified items so that we can discuss which can be ‘self-insured’ e.g. memorial crosses, defibs, benches, etc.
sum assured
Option 1
Flagpoles/Noticeboard
1900
Option 2
31 x benches
12800
Option 3
defibs
10200
Option 4
28 x memorial crosses
28000
Phil Lambert advises not to bother insuring the crosses. Estimated replacement value incl lettering is £1500 each.
The Circuit advice that there is a very low incidence nationally of theft/ damage to defib units/cabinets.
I have written to Howard Vaughan (GCSA chair) asking for formal confirmation that the missing marquee was weather-damaged beyond repair.
Phil believes that it may have been a previous marquee that was damaged; ours might still be at Cae Ffwt, he will check.
Visual/safety inspection of covered items was done by DJC as part of the annual fixed asset valuation.
Financial Documentation
From last meeting:
Terms of Reference amended slightly as follows:
Note 8. Frequency changed to monthly as per last council meeting; Note 11. Added the need to publicise the meetings.
Asked council to approve these changes at the 6th February meeting: not
Draft updates of the Financial Regulations and Risk Schedule had been circulated for comment before presenting them to council. We discussed several ‘oddities’ and decided as follows:
Chris and David to finish off the Draft Financial Regs, including an ‘Executive Summary’, and present this to council;
Bob and David to finish off the Draft Risk assessment for presenting to council.
Any other business
Replacement contractor for bench maintenance. We will pursue this further once the annual bench report has been produced; David has only just done the annual inspection.
Consensus that the Zoom format had worked well for us and we should continue to offer this to members; we can continue to use Gill’s licence until the Council pays for one.
Next meeting: Monday 29th April to bring back into line with Council????