Inspection of accounts

This article was published in 2011, in Newsletter 94.



At the Campaign’s AGM in November 2010 I said that I had been unable to find anyone independent of the Committee to review the accounts for 2009-10 and asked if anyone present would be prepared to do this. At the end of the meeting, Paul Ryan and Shirley Fieldhouse offered to help, and I decided to ask Shirley to review them, as she has experience of keeping accounts for a voluntary organisation as well as some familiarity with the requirements for inspecting charity accounts. Many thanks to Shirley for doing the inspection, and also to Paul for volunteering his time.

The inspection was carried out on 24 November, when I took the accounting records to Shirley for her to examine. She asked a number of questions about our accounting procedures, looked at a selection of transactions, and verified the account balances at the date of the accounts. As a result of the review, Shirley produced a brief report stating that she was satisfied that appropriate records had been kept and that she had found nothing to which the attention of the membership should be drawn.

The Committee will be deciding what to do about an entirely independent inspection of the accounts next year, as the Charity Commission only requires one if income exceeds £25,000.

Chris Dorling