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.
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 specific procedures for this engagement and the extent to which these are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud are detailed below:
The LLP is subject to laws and regulations that directly affect the financial statements including financial reporting legislation. We determined that the following laws and regulations were most significant including:
- Companies Act 2006 (as applied by The Limited Liability Partnerships (Accounts and Audit) Regulations 2008);
- Financial Reporting Standard 102; and
- General Data Protection Regulations.
We assessed the extent of compliance with these laws and regulations as part of our procedures on the related financial statement items.
We understood how the LLP is complying with those legal and regulatory frameworks by making inquiries to management and those responsible for legal and compliance procedures. We corroborated our inquiries through our review of relevant documentation.
The engagement partner assessed whether the engagement team collectively had the appropriate competence and capabilities to identify or recognise non-compliance with laws and regulations. The assessment did not identify any issues in the area.
We assessed the susceptibility of the financial statements to material misstatement, including how fraud might occur. Audit procedures performed by the engagement team included:
- Identifying and assessing the design effectiveness of controls management has in place to prevent and detect fraud.
- Understanding how those charged with governance considered and addressed the potential for override of controls or other inappropriate influence over the financial reporting process; and
- Challenging assumptions and judgements made by management in its significant accounting estimates.
As a result of the above procedures, we considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the organisation for fraud and identified the greatest potential for fraud would be the use of management override or inappropriate assumptions accounting estimates.
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 Report of the Auditors.