RES/Appointment Of Grant Thornton as the Council's External Auditor

Tender description

The PSAA set the fees external audit fees. The fees for 23/24 were anounced in November 2023. This increases the annual fee to circa £600k. On 5 December 2023 Cabinet approved expenditure of £2.5m for the five year contract. We now need to increase cabinet office approval to 3.2m from 2.5m as original budget spend was approved on budget for 500k p/a, but this has since been increased to 600k p/a. We now need to create a DN number in order to raise a PO number. Grant Thornton have not yet raised any quarterly invoices for 23/24 but are likely to do so shortly. BCC could have decided not to “opt in” to the PSAA framework and carried out it’s own independent tender for external audit services. The idea is that, in opting in to the PSAA, all this work is done for us and there are associated savings and economies of scale. Full Council must approve the decision to opt in, which they did in 2022.