We have audited the financial statements which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, Summary Income and Expenditure Account, the Balance Sheet, the Cash Flow Statement, and related notes.
This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with section 235 of the Companies Act 1985. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company’s members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.
The responsibilities of the trustees (who are also the directors of Citizens Advice for the purposes of company law) for preparing the Annual Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) are set out in the Statement of Trustees’ Responsibilities.
Our responsibility is to audit the financial statements in accordance with relevant legal and regulatory requirements and International Standards on Auditing (UK and Ireland).
We report to you our opinion as to whether the financial statements give a true and fair view and are properly prepared in accordance with the Companies Act 1985. We also report to you whether in our opinion the Trustees’ Report is consistent with the financial statements.
In addition we report to you if, in our opinion, the charitable company has not kept proper accounting records, if we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit, or if information specified by law regarding trustees’ remuneration and other transactions is not disclosed.
We read the Trustees’ Report and consider the implications for our report if we become aware of any apparent misstatements within it.
We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK and Ireland) issued by the Auditing Practices Board. An audit includes examination, on a test basis, of evidence relevant to the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. It also includes an assessment of the significant estimates and judgments made by the trustees in the preparation of the financial statements, and of whether the accounting policies are appropriate to the charitable company's circumstances, consistently applied and adequately disclosed.
We planned and performed our audit so as to obtain all information and explanations which we considered necessary in order to provide us with sufficient evidence to give reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free from material misstatement, whether caused by fraud or other irregularity or error. In forming our opinion we also evaluated the overall adequacy of the presentation of information in the financial statements
As set out in Note 20, during the year the charity closed its defined benefit pension scheme to new entrants and to future service accrual. Following advice from the pension scheme actuary the charity has a formal agreement in place to make annual payments of £700k over the next 20 years to fund the deficit in the scheme as at 31 March 2008. This liability has been disclosed as a contingent liability and no provision for the liability payable under the arrangement has been included in the balance sheet at 31 March 2008.
In our opinion the existence of an agreed contribution statement provides a sufficiently reliable estimate of the liability such that the net present value of the future payments should be included as a provision on the face of the balance sheet under Financial Reporting Standard 12. Based on a discount rate used in the actuarial valuation a provision should be made as at 31 March 2008 of £8,272k. As a result of this provision total assets less all liabilities and accumulated unrestricted funds at 31 March 2008 should decrease by £8,272k and total outgoing resources/net outgoing resources for the year then ended should increase by £8,272k.
Except for the financial effect of not making the provision referred to in the preceding paragraphs, in our opinion:
13 August 2008
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