The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7200 p781-786
1 June 2002

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Branch Representatives' meeting summary

Improvement sought in presentation of Society's accounts

The meeting unanimously endorsed a motion calling for the Society's accounts to be more transparent, for them to be provided to members at least 20 days before the annual general meeting and for the honorary auditors to monitor income and expenditure with an enhanced and more public role.

Proposing a motion to that effect, Dr ANDREW HERSOM (Hull) said that the accounts for 2001 were hard to decipher, gave no detail about large sums of money being spent on behalf of members and were difficult to compare with the accounts from previous years. And members had had little time to read them before the AGM.

The branch had been surprised to learn that the honorary auditors only had a two-hour annual meeting, despite requesting more frequent meetings, that they only saw the accounts available to ordinary members, that their questions were not always helpfully answered, that supportive evidence (eg, committee minutes) was not always available, that some questions were blocked because "they are now covered by the Audit Committee", that Audit Committee minutes were not forthcoming, that year-by-year budget changes made comparisons difficult, and that the honorary auditors lacked any real power because their only recourse was failing to qualify the accounts, which could have serious legal implications.

PAUL McGORRY (Hull), seconding the motion, said that the Council seemed to have sidelined the honorary auditors when it set up its Audit Committee. He went on to question whether the best people were appointed to the Audit Committee and whether the committee's reporting was transparent enough.