Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor's report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.
Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:
- We obtained an understanding of the company and the sector in which it operates to identify laws and regulations that could reasonably be expected to have a direct effect on financial statements. We obtained our understanding in this regard through discussions with management, industry research, application of cumulative audit knowledge and experience of the sector.
- We determined the principal laws and regulations relevant to the company in this regard to be those arising from Companies Act 2006, relevant financial reporting standards, the Company's constitutio and UK taxation legislation. Including those that will have an indirect impact such as Data Protection Act 1996, Employement Act 2008, Bribery Act 2010, Health and Safety Act 1974, Telecommunication Act 1984, Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 etc.
- We designed our audit procedures to ensure the audit team considered whether there were any indications of non-compliance by the company with those laws and regulations. These procedures included, but were not limited to:
- Enquiries of management;
- Review of legal correspondence; and
- Review of regulatory correspondence.
- We also identified the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements due to fraud. We considered, in addition to the non-rebuttable presumption of a risk of fraud arising from management override of controls, that the potential for management bias was identified in relation to the impairment of related party balances. We addressed this risk by challenging the assumptions and judgements made by management when auditing these significant accounting estimates.
- As in all of our audits, we addressed the risk of fraud arising from management override of controls by performing audit procedures which included but were not limited to the testing of journals; reviewing accounting estimates for evidence of bias; and evaluating the business rationale of any significant transactions that are unusual or outside the normal course of business.
Because of the Inherent limitations of an audit, there is a risk that we will not detect all irregularities, including those leading to a material misstatement in the financial statements or non-compliance with regulation. This risk increases the more that compliance with a law or regulation is removed from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, as we will be less likely to become aware of instances of non-compliance. The risk is also greater regarding Irregularities occurring due to fraud rather than error, as fraud involves intentional concealment, forgery, collusion, omission or misrepresentation.
A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council's website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our Auditors' Report.