, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Mike.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Out of £500,000, did you say?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Thank you very much. Sorry, Rhianon, I'll come back to you. Diolch.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Sorry, Rhianon, I'm cutting across. Do you offer sabbaticals as well?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
That's where my question was going. Is that something that you actively encourage, through secondments and things, so that they get the experience of being in a different body, to be able to bring that experience back?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Are you seeing anybody leaving and then coming back—so that they potentially would step up to a different role and then come back to a higher role, as happens within the public sector, maybe? Do any trends like that happen?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Rhianon, I think Mike just had a quick supplementary on that.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
What was the peak?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Thank you. I'll bring Rhianon in at that point. We'll just unmute Rhianon, hopefully. Hang on—there we are.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Then the world gets involved.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Okay. So, with that in mind, by improving the timeliness of doing this work, it will help with the relevancy of the findings. So, in theory, you should see a change in this over time. Is that the theory?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Okay, thank you. And then there’s a drop in the proportion of stakeholders who said that they, through your work, had gained useful insight that they would not have acquired otherwise. You’ve also missed the target for the proportion of stakeholders who…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Okay.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
And does that have any bearing, then, on your fee-earning potential? So, maybe you can talk about what does that mean. [Laughter.] As in, what is the tangible—? By making that conscious decision to move to that rather than this, in balancing your books there…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
So, it was a conscious decision.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Okay, thank you very much. The annual—. Sorry, I've lost my place. Ah, there we are. You talk in the annual report about prioritising work, and you've slightly improved your performance around delivering to statutory deadlines. I know we were interested in…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
—if you do have any concerns about your auditors. That's important for us to keep an eye on. Just now looking more towards the performance indicators, and particularly those requiring improvement and the things that we've discussed with your predecessors…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for that. I think that sort of explains some of that delay, and yes, do keep us informed—
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
And who's now the current—?
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
You were appointed on 12 June, and you're talking about 13 June there, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think you were—were you chairing ARAC at that time? So, was there an added complication of you going into the chair and appointing a new chair for ARAC and…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
—your new role. So, it's good to have you with us and we extend our congratulations as a committee. I'd like to start by looking to understand how the annual report and accounts were prepared and the challenges you faced during the year. You laid your annual…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Wonderful. Thank you very much, and thank you for the documentation we've had from you. The reports make for a lot of reading, because they are quite chunky documents, so it's always good to get them and always good to have you here. Obviously, this is being…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Good morning.
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Welcome back. We've got our next session now, which is item 4, the scrutiny of the annual report and accounts and the annual plan for Audit Wales. We've got a new set of witnesses in front of us. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves for the record, please…
, Finance Committee
Audit Wales – Scrutiny of the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and the Annual Plan 2024-25: Evidence session
Welcome back to the meeting.
