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 a Report of the Auditors 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 the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.
The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:
In planning and designing our audit tests, we identify and assess the risks of material mis-statements, whether due to fraud or error. Our risk assessment procedures included:
- Enquiries of management about the entities policies and procedures on compliance with laws and regulations and whether they were aware of any instances of noncompliance together with the internal controls established to mitigate risks of fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations.
- Enquiries of management about the entities policies and procedures on fraud risks, including any actual, suspected or alleged fraud.
- Considered the nature of the industry and sector, control environment and business performance including the key drivers for directors' remuneration, bonus levels and performance targets.
- Reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.
We communicated relevant identified laws and regulations and potential fraud risks to all engagement team members and remained alert to any indications of fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations throughout the audit.
We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks that the entity operates in, through discussions with the director, and from our commercial knowledge and experience of the sector in which the company operates, to enable us to identify the key laws and regulations applicable to the company. We focused on specific laws and regulations which we considered may have a direct material effect on the financial statement or the operations of the company, including the Companies Act 2006, taxation legislation, data protection, anti-bribery, employment, environmental and health and safety legislation.
As a result of these procedures, we considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the organisation for fraud. In common with all audits under ISAs (UK), we are also required to perform specific procedures to respond to the risk of management override of controls including the following:
- Reviewing financial statement disclosures and testing to supporting documentation to assess compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
- Enquiry of management concerning actual and potential litigation and claims.
- Reviewing correspondence with HMRC, and the company's legal advisors.
- Addressing the risk of fraud through management override of controls, testing the appropriateness of journal entries and other adjustments, assessing whether judgements made in making accounting estimates are indicative of a potential bias, and evaluating the business rationale of any significant transactions that are unusual or outside the normal course of business.
Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. The more removed that laws and regulations are from financial transactions, the less likely it is that we would become aware of non-compliance.
In addition, as with any audit, there remained a higher risk of non-detection of fraud, as these may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal controls. Our audit procedures are designed to detect material misstatement. We are not responsible for preventing non-compliance or fraud and cannot be expected to detect non-compliance with all laws and regulations.
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 Report of the Auditors.