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 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:
• the engagement partner ensured that the engagement team collectively had the appropriate competence, capabilities and skills to identify or recognise non compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
• we identified the laws and regulations applicable to the company through discussions with directors and other management;
• we assessed the extent of compliance with laws and regulations identified above through making enquiries of management and inspecting legal correspondence;
• the identified laws and regulations were communicated within the audit team regularly and the team remained alert to any instances on non-compliance throughout the audit.
We assessed the susceptibility of the company's financial statements to material misstatement, including obtaining an understanding of how fraud might occur, by;
• making enquiries management as to where they considered there was susceptibility to fraud, their knowledge of actual, suspected and alleged fraud; and
• considering the internal controls in place to mitigate risks of fraud and none-compliance with laws and regulations.
To address the risk of fraud through management bias and overide of controls, we;
• performed analytical procedures to identify an unusual or unexpected relationships;
• tested journal entries to identify unusual transactions;
• assessed whether judgements and assumptions made in determining the accounting estimates were indicative of potential bias; and
• investigated and evaluated the business rationale of significant transactions outside the normal course of business.
In response to the risk of irregularities and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we designed procedures which included, but not limited to:
• reviewing financial statement disclosures and testing to supporting documentation to assess compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
• evaluate the overall presentation, structure and content of the financial statements, including the disclosures, and whether the financial statements represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation (ie. gives a true and fair view).
• enquiry of management around actual and potential litigation and claims; and
• reviewing legal and professional expenses for potential ongoing litigation work
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 increases the more the 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 accruing 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 Report of the Auditors.