Audit and Risk Committee membership announced

Membership of our new Audit and Risk Committee has been announced, as follows:

Non-Council members

Elizabeth Butler (Chairman)

David Hughes

Judith Rutherford

RCVS Council members

Richard Davis

Lynne Hill

The new Committee was set up following recommendations in the RCVS Overspend Review Group’s report (otherwise known as the McKelvey Report).

The role of the Audit and Risk Committee is to support RCVS Council in meeting its oversight responsibilities. This will include:

• Monitoring the Council’s risk management arrangements
• Approving the internal audit programme
• Advising Council on the comprehensiveness and reliability of assurances and internal controls, including internal and external audit arrangements, and on the implications of assurances provided in respect of risk and control.

The non-Council members of the Committee were appointed by a panel chaired by Sir David Barnes, Chairman of the Governance Review Group.

The new Committee, which is accountable to Council and will report at least annually, will meet for the first time in early autumn.

“I am pleased that the new Audit and Risk Committee is now in place,” says Jacqui Molyneux, RCVS President. “It should offer reassurance to both members and the public that the framework via which Council’s activities are scrutinised is robust.”

About the new Committee members

Elizabeth Butler is a practising Chartered Accountant who has held a wide variety of non-executive appointments, bringing both professional expertise and a depth of understanding of risk and governance.

Among other roles, she has chaired the audit committees of the Royal College of Nursing and Hyde Housing Association, and currently chairs the audit committees of the Electoral Commission and the Local Government Boundary Commission for England.

She is also chairman of Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust.

Richard Davis is a Privy Council-appointed member of RCVS Council.

He farms 104 hectares in North Bedfordshire and has been a director of First Milk Ltd for seven years.

He has also been a director of Westbury Dairies Ltd, where he was Chairman of the Audit Committee.

Richard has served on the audit committee of Assured Food Standards (Red Tractor) for the last six years and served as the Chairman of Assured Dairy Farms for six years (the scheme sets, audits and monitors production, welfare and environmental standards for most UK processors, and over 12,000 dairy farms).

Lynne Hill MRCVS is Chief Executive of Langford Veterinary Services Ltd, University of Bristol, and was previously Head of the Clinical Services Department at the Royal Veterinary College.

Prior to that, Lynne was European Marketing Manager for Hill’s Pet Nutrition.

She is an elected member of RCVS Council and was President in 2005-6.

David Hughes is a chartered accountant and a former senior partner who has extensive expertise in financial reporting, accounting, auditing, risk management and governance issues.

He is currently a Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee for the Highways Agency and a member of the Department for Transport Audit Committee.

Judith Rutherford has five years’ experience as a Non-Executive Director and as a member of the Audit Committee in a community Healthcare and Primary Care Trust within the regulated environment of the NHS.

She is currently Director of an organisation that provides interim management and consultancy to the private and public sectors.