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 legal and regulatory framework applicable to the company. We identified those laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the preparation of the financial statements, including the Companies Act 2006, FRS 102 – The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland, relevant tax legislation, and the Company's Constitution (Articles of Association).
We also considered those laws and regulations that do not have a direct effect on the financial statements but compliance with which may be fundamental to the Company's ability to operate or to avoid material penalties. These include Anti-Money Laundering Regulations, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, Financial Conduct Authority Regulations (where applicable), anti-bribery legislation, and employment legislation.
We discussed with management how the compliance with these laws and regulations is monitored and obtained copies of the key policies and procedures in place. We also identified the individuals who have responsibility for ensuring that the company complies with laws and regulations and deals with reporting any issues if they arise. As part of our planning procedures, we assessed the risk of any non-compliance with laws and regulations on the company's ability to continue trading and the risk of material misstatement to the accounts.
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:
- Making enquiries of management;
- Reviewing of regulatory correspondence;
- Review of current year and post year end journals
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 www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor's report.