PETERLEE TOWN COUNCIL

Notice of conclusion of the audit

Annual Return for the year ended 31st March 2020

 

Section 25 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014

Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015

 

	Notes
1.         The audit of accounts for the Council for the year ended 31 March 2020 has been concluded. 2.     The Annual Governance and Accountability Return is available for inspection by any local government elector of the area of the Council on application to:	(a)  Delete as appropriate
(b) Ian Morris, Chief Officer Petelee Town Council Shotton Hall Peterlee County Durham SR8 2PH	(b)  Insert name, position and address of the person to whom local government electors should apply to inspect the Annual Return
2.         Copies will be provided to any local government elector on payment of £1 for each copy of the Annual Return.	(c)  Insert a reasonable sum for copying costs
Announcement made by: (d)     Ian Morris, Chief Officer	(d)  Insert name and position of person placing the notice
Date of announcement: (e)        29th September 2020	(e)  Insert date of placing of the notice

 

 

For sale by sealed bids only

Peterlee Town Council is disposing of this Bear Cat wood chipper.  Model number 72854s, PTO Driven, purchased in 2002, all service history included up to 2015.  Sold as seen for spare and repair only.

If you would like to arrange a viewing of the machine prior to placing an order please contact Wayne Harriman on 07801244467 or 0191 5862491.

Any bids must be submitted in writing in a sealed envelope marked

‘FAO Ian Morris, Chief Officer, ref Bear Cat Bid’

and delivered to Shotton Hall, Peterlee SR8 2PH no later than 12pm on Wednesday 8th July 2020.  Please ensure that you include your name and contact details with the bid!

 

Peterlee Town Council has published its annual return for the 2019/20 financial year as part of the annual process for the external auditing of the Council’s accounts.

You can access the documents relating to the annual return and annual accounts on the links at the bottom of this post.  The period for inspection starts tomorrow, 25th June and ends 5th August 2020.  You can read the formal notice here: Notice of appointment of date for the exercise of public rights

This information has been sent to the appointed External Auditors, Mazars LLP, Aykley Heads, Durham, DH1 5TS and as such they are currently unaudited and subject to change.

Here is some information about the audit process provided by the external auditor:

Councils’ Accounts: A Summary of Public Rights

The basic position

By law any interested person has the right to inspect a council’s/meeting’s accounts.  If you are entitled and registered to vote in local council elections then you (or your representative) have additional rights to ask the appointed auditor questions about the council’s accounts or object to an item of account contained within them.

The right to inspect the accounts

When your council has finalised its accounts for the previous financial year it must advertise that they are available for people to inspect. Having given the council reasonable notice of your intentions, you then have 30 working days to look through the accounting statements in the Annual Return and any supporting documents. By arrangement, you will be able to inspect and make copies of the accounts and the relevant documents. You may have to pay a copying charge.

The right to ask the auditor questions about the accounts

You can only ask the appointed auditor questions about the accounts. The auditor does not have to answer questions about the council’s policies, finances, procedures or anything else not related to the accounts. Your questions must be about the accounts for the financial year just ended. The auditor does not have to say whether they think something the council has done, or an item in its accounts, is lawful or reasonable.

The right to object to the accounts

If you think that the council has spent money that it should not have, or that someone has caused a loss to the council deliberately or by behaving irresponsibly, you can request the auditor to apply to the courts for a declaration that an item of account is contrary to law. You do this by sending a formal ‘notice of objection’ to the auditor at the address below. The notice must be in writing and copied to the council. In it, you must tell the auditor why you are objecting and what you want the auditor to do about it. The auditor must reach a decision on your objection. If you are not happy with that decision, you can appeal to the courts.

You may also object if you think that there is something in the accounts that the auditor should discuss with the council or tell the public about in a ‘public interest report’. You must follow the same procedure as outlined in the previous paragraph. The auditor must then decide whether to take any action. The auditor does not have to, but usually will, give reasons for his/her decision and you cannot appeal to the courts. More information is available on the National Audit Office website (see contact details below).

You may not use this ‘right to object’ to make a personal complaint or claim against your council. You should take such complaints to your local Citizens’ Advice Bureau, local Law Centre or your solicitor. You may also be able to approach the Standards Committee of your local principal authority if you believe that a member of the council has broken the Code of Conduct for Members.

What else you can do

Instead of objecting, you can give the auditor information that is relevant to his/her responsibilities. For example, you can simply tell the auditor if you think that something is wrong with the accounts or about waste and inefficiency in the way the council runs its services. You should make it clear that you are providing information rather than making a formal objection. You do not have to follow any set time limits or procedures. The auditor does not have to give you a detailed report of any subsequent investigation, but will usually tell you the outcome.

A final word

Councils, and so local taxpayers, must meet the costs of dealing with questions and objections. In deciding whether to take your objection forward, one of a series of factors the auditor must take into account is the cost that will be involved. The auditor will only continue with the objection if it is in the public interest to do so. If you appeal to the courts, you might have to pay for the action yourself.

 

Who should you contact?

For more detailed guidance on electors’ rights and the special powers of auditors, copies of the publication Council Accounts – a guide to your rights are available by calling the National Audit Office on 020 7798 7000 or downloading from the website https://www.nao.org.uk/

If you wish to contact your Council’s appointed external auditor please write to:   Cameron Waddell, Partner, Mazars LLP, local.councils@mazars.co.uk

 

Signed AGAR 2020

Peterlee Town Council Statement of Accounts 2019-2020

Bank – Cash and Investment Reconciliation as at 31 March 2020

Analytical Review 2020

Peterlee Reserves Reconciliation 2020

 

Notice of appointment of date for the exercise of public rights

Accounts for the year ended 31st March 2020

 

The Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, and

The Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015 (SI 234)

 

1.   Date of announcement:   24TH June 2020                                (a)	(a)  Insert date of placing of this notice on your website.
2.   Any person interested has the right to inspect and make copies of the accounts to be audited and all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to them. For the year ended 31 March 2020 these documents will be available on reasonable notice on application to:
(b)  Ian Morris, Chief Officer & Town Clerk. Peterlee Town Council, Shotton Hall, Peterlee, County Durham SR8 2PH council@peterlee.gov.uk	(b)  Insert name, position and contact details of the Clerk or other person to whom any person may apply to inspect the accounts.
commencing on (c)          25th June 2020	.
and ending on (d)             5th August 2020	(c )And (d) The inspection period must be 30 working days in total and commence no later than 1 September 2020.
3.   Local Government Electors and their representatives also have:
·       the opportunity to question the auditor about the accounts; and
·       the right to make objections to the accounts or any item in them. Written notice of an objection must first be given to the auditor and a copy sent to the Council (f). The auditor can be contacted at the address in paragraph 4 below for this purpose during the inspection period at 2 above.
4.      The audit is being conducted under the provisions of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, the Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015 and the National Audit Office’ Code of Audit Practice.  Your audit is being carried out by:   Mazars LLP, Salvus House, Aykley Heads, Durham, DH1 5TS
5.    This announcement is made by (e)) Ian Morris, Chief Officer & Town Clerk	(e)     Insert name and position of person placing the notice

 

Accounts for the year ended 31st March 2020
DECLARATION

The accounting statements attached on the link below (Section 2 of the Annual Governance & Accountability Return, Part3) have been submitted to the Council’s External Auditor, Mazars LLP, for review.  As such they are unaudited and therefore subject to change.  The audited accounting statements will be published by 30th November 2020.

Ian Morris

Chief Officer & Town Clerk

 

Signed AGAR 2020

 

Our buildings may be closed to the public but our staff are still working and providing services to the people of Peterlee.

We are working alongside colleagues at Durham County Council, East Durham Trust, Citizens Advice County Durham and other local agencies to coordinate our activities as best we can during these testing times.

We are:
? providing a phone befriending service, reaching out to vulnerable residents in the community to check that they are ok and to provide some help and reassurance – let us know if you have a friend, relative or neighbour who you think might benefit from a friendly phone call to check in on them from time to time;
? providing logistical support to help a Peterlee food bank pick up donations from right across the wider area;
? carrying our regular checks of Woodhouse Park and other public open spaces to try to keep them as litter-free and safe as possible;
?‍♀️streaming regular online video health and well-being classes to help people stay active at home;
?helping local community groups by connecting them to available services and funding sources.

Following the Government advice received on Monday 16th March 2020, the Council has made the difficult decision to close Shotton Hall and the Pavilion at Helford Road to all public and private bookings and functions from Wednesday 18th March for one calendar month.

All classes, bookings, events and functions at both sites are cancelled with immediate effect.

The closure will apply for a minimum of one calendar month, ie until at least 18th April 2020.

We will continue to monitor the advice from government on a daily basis and will update this information as and when anything changes.

Our staff are contacting all bookings for both sites to explain the situation and discuss refunds or alternative dates.

If you do have any questions or concerns please contact us on 0191 5862491 (Shotton Hall enquiries) or 0191 586 9957 (Pavilion enquiries), respond to this FB post or direct message us, or email council@peterlee,gov.uk

Stay safe everyone.

The Pavilion Sports & Community Centre at Helford Road will be closed to the public for 2 weeks from Monday 16th March 2020 until Monday 30th March 2020.

We can confirm that as at lunchtime on Friday 13th March there are NO known cases of COVID-19 in our customers or staff.

However, given the vulnerable nature of a good proportion of our users and the potential implications of last-minute closures due to possible future illness in staff we have taken this difficult decision to protect our customers and to provide some certainty about the next couple of weeks.

Any private party bookings over the next 2 weeks will be contacted directly to discuss their specific requirements. We are also contacting as many of our class members and community hirers as we possibly can to explain the situation to them direct.

We will be keeping a close eye on the emerging picture and government advice and will publish more information about future opening as soon as we can.

We are sorry for any inconvenience caused, and hope that our customers understand our desire to do our bit to reduce the likelihood of them contracting COVID-19 by attending sessions in our building.

Peterlee Town Council has just gone out to tender for the construction of a new ‘eco-friendly’ amenity building and store room at the Thorntree Gill allotments site in Peterlee.

All expressions of interest and contractor questions must be logged online through our procurement website here: https://procontract.due-north.com/Advert?advertId=6f56cd59-aeea-e911-80fa-005056b64545

Closing date for tender submissions is 4pm Monday 4th November 2019.

The results for the 2017 election of Town Councillors were announced on Saturday 6th May 2017.

Full results are available here.

In summary, the new members of Peterlee Town Council are…

Acre Rigg Ward

• Gordon Leslie Carne
• Karon Liddell
• Stephen Daniel McGlen
• Steve Miles
• Sheila Simpson

Dene House Ward

• David Paul Curry
• Karen June Duffy
• Terry Duffy
• Sonny Kirkup

Eden Hill Ward

• Mary Alison Cartwright
• Bob Kyle
• Jamie Michael Stuart Robinson

Howletch Ward

• Steven Patrick Franklin
• Angie Long
• Rob Moore
• Alan Thomas Wilkinson

Passfield Ward

• Karen Hawley
• Susan McDonnell
• Archibald Scott Henderson Meikle
• Andrew Watson
• Vik Watson

The elected members of the Council take up office on Monday 8th May 2017 and will be signing their acceptances of office, declaring interests, etc over the next week or so.  They will meet as the new Peterlee Town Council for the first time at our Annual Meeting on Monday 15th May 2017.  Members of the public are welcome to attend the meeting, please contact the Council Offices at Shotton Hall for more information 0191 5862491 or council@peterlee.gov.uk