Under the various regulations and laws which govern the way town councils are run, all local residents within each town council area have the right to inspect the town council’s accounts each year during a period of time referred to as ‘the period of exercise of public rights’.
The period of rights for residents to inspect Winsford Town Council’s accounts for the financial year 2020/21 lasts from Thursday 1st July 2021 to Wednesday 11th August 2021.
A notice confirming these dates can be found by following this link.
Should anyone wish to examine the full set of accounts, they should contact – in the first instance – the Town Clerk (Mark Bailey) or the Town Mayor (Cllr Nathan Pardoe). Contact details for both can be found below.
A summary of the Winsford Town Council accounts for the 2020-21 financial year is contained within a document called the Annual Governance and Accountability Return (AGAR). The AGAR, as well as providing a summary of the accounts also provides a statement on governance (how the council is run and how it makes its decisions).
The AGAR can be seen by clicking the link below. The AGAR was agreed by the Town Council at a meeting on 1st June 2021 and has been signed off by the Mayor and the Town Clerk.
The figures set out in the AGAR are based, at least in part, on the information contained within the Town Council’s various bank accounts. A summary of this information can be found below. This information presents the amount of money the Town Council had in the bank on 31st March 2021.
The differences between the 2019-20 AGAR and the 2020-21 are explained in the document below – as you can see, some figures have increased and some have decreased. The reasons for these changes are presented in this document.
At the end of the 2020-21 financial year (on 31st March 2021), the Town Council was owed money and also owed others money – the details of who owed what can be seen on the document below.
This information will now be sent off to the Town Council’s external auditor – PFK Littlejohn – contact details can be found below and the organisation’s website can be found at https://www.pkf-littlejohn.com/. The external auditors will carry out a ‘limited assurance review’ on the information provided by the Town Council. An internal audit has already been carried out by JDH Business Services Ltd and a copy of their report can be found in this document.