As you may remember in December we announced our first General Meeting since the AGM. This will take place online on the evening of January 14th 2025, and is open to all members.

As a member of the York Supplies Co-op there are occasionally times where we need you (the members) to help us by agreeing to decisions the business needs to take. 

This is one of those times, so hopefully you can spare 30mins to join us on a Zoom meeting and have your say as we need at least 10% of the members to be there in order to fulfil the requirements set out as a cooperative

We actually only have one item that needs to be addressed this time which relates to how we are audited as an organisation. Although this is not an exciting item like the adoption of some new products or services it is really important that we make the change so we can save money!

Below is some information to explain what and why we need to do it, if you have any questions please get in touch at members@yorksuppliesco-op.co.uk ahead of Monday and we will get back to you. 

What is being proposed?

A formal vote of members to exempt York Supplies Community Society from having a costly full audit of our accounts (31 December 2024). 

Isn’t an audit important?

Making sure that the annual report and accounts present a fair picture of the society’s financial position is important, but a full statutory audit is a very expensive way to give members confidence in our finances.As a relatively small business, we can instead choose to have an Accountants’ Report on the accounts.  This is a bit like an “independent examination” that a lot of charities and community groups have. 

Why wasn’t this done at the AGM?

At the time of the AGM we thought that a full audit of the society’s accounts was needed as a condition of the grant money we’d received from the Government. 

How much is this likely to save?

The difference between the cost of a full audit and an accountant’s report is about £4,500.  This is a significant sum for a business like ours in its first year of trading in community ownership. 

What level of audit is required for the Government grant?

We have had the spending of the grant money audited, and last year’s accounts which covered the period when the grant was received were also fully audited.  We believe that this meets the requirements of the grant. 

Why can’t we just do this with an online poll?

As a Co-operative & Community Benefit Society, our rule book (i.e. the constitution) requires decisions on what form of audit to have to be made by the members in a General Meeting.