Central Coast Council’s financial results for the last financial year have come back from the auditors with qualified opinions based on the Council’s valuation of some assets such as roads and drainage.
Council will present its audited financial statements 2020-2021 and the Auditor’s reports at the Council-under-administration meeting on March 22.
In the meantime, the statements are open for public comment and available for inspection after having been returned from the NSW Audit Office recently after an extension was granted to February 28.
The results show that Council’s consolidated net operating result before grants and contributions provided for capital purposes was a loss of $70.6M.
This was better than the previous year of $89M.
The net operating loss attributable to the Council’s Water Supply Authority was $16.8M
There are two financial statements: the consolidated accounts which add together the Council core business and the water supply, and the second statement which accounts for the water business alone.
The auditor of the water business gave a qualified opinion on the statements saying that the Council recognised $3.6 billion of stormwater drainage, water supply network and sewerage network assets within Infrastructure, property, plant and equipment in the Statement of Financial Position as at 30 June 2021.
But his opinion was that Council was unable to provide sufficient evidence to support the carrying values of these assets.
“This is because the asset data used by the Authority to value these assets could not be reconciled by the Authority to its financial records prior to the valuation,” the auditor said.
“The asset data was sourced from a non-financial system that did not include financial information or reference data that could be used to identify assets in the Authority’s fixed asset register.”
The auditor also gave a qualified opinion in the consolidated statement, because of the carrying values of roads, bridges, footpaths, bulk earthworks, stormwater drainage, water supply network and sewerage network assets which Council put at $5.5 billion but certified that it was unable to provide sufficient evidence to support those values.
The auditor said this was because the asset data used by Council to value these assets could not be reconciled by Council to its financial records prior to the valuation.
“The asset data was sourced from a non-financial system that did not include financial information or reference data that could be used to identify assets in Council’s fixed asset register,” the auditor said.
He said he was unable to provide an opinion that the affected amounts were materially correct.
The audited Financial Statements and the auditors’ report for Central Coast Council can be downloaded from https://www.yourvoiceourcoast.com/financialreports
Submissions from the public in response to the statements are open until 6.30pm, March 29.
Merilyn Vale