Procedures

The APB’s operating procedures are determined by its Articles of Association and its Standing Orders. Key features of the APB’s operating procedures are as follows:

Membership of the Board

• The APB shall have 15 members comprising:
  • the Chairman
  • the APB Executive Director
  • thirteen other members
• 40% of the membership of the APB shall be ‘responsible individuals’ (persons eligible for appointment as company auditor under the Companies Act 2006) and any of the balance of 60% who are accountants shall not be office holders of any accountancy body or persons actively involved in the governance of any accountancy body nor be partners in firms authorised to conduct audits.

Observers

• The, UK, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority (IAASA) are entitled to appoint one representative to attend and speak, but not to vote, at APB meetings. The Financial Services Authority has also accepted an invitation from the APB to attend meetings on a similar basis. The primary role of observers is to keep the APB informed of relevant developments within their organisations, to give the APB the benefit of their advice, and to keep their organisations informed of APB activities.

Voting

• Questions arising at a meeting, other than matters which are for decision by the chairman thereof, shall be decided as follows:-
  1. a decision to establish, publish, amend or withdraw a statement of auditing standards or an exposure draft of such a statement shall require a majority of the votes of all the members of the APB for the time being (whether present at a meeting or not);
  2. a decision to establish, publish, amend or withdraw non-mandatory notes, guidance and other material relevant to auditing shall require a simple majority of the votes of the members of the APB who are at a meeting where a quorum is present and at which the matter is decided upon;
  3. any other questions shall be decided by a majority of the votes actually cast at a meeting, and in the case of an equality of votes the chairman of the meeting shall have a second or casting vote.

Sub-committees and working parties

• The APB may from time to time establish sub-committees and working parties, and agree their membership and terms of reference. Sub-committees will be responsible for monitoring developments and undertaking a range of work in specific areas while working parties will be established for specified projects.

Technical Advisory Group

• The APB has established a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to:
  1. provide a group of audit practitioners to review draft APB documents for technical accuracy and practicality prior to their submission to APB for approval,
  2. provide a source of audit practitioners to participate in APB working parties (either through direct participation or by nominating an ‘expert’ from within their firm), and
  3. meet annually, or more frequently if necessary, on an informal basis with the APB Chairman and Executive Director to comment on APB’s work programme and to highlight issues where standards and/or guidance are required.

Any audit firm or public sector audit agency may nominate a member of TAG provided their nominee has technical expertise in auditing, and has sufficient time to fulfil the role. Membership of TAG is subject to approval by the APB.

Consultation procedures

• Before publishing or amending an Auditing Standard or any other Standard, the APB shall publish an exposure draft on its website, ensure that a hard copy of the document is circulated to the accountancy bodies and to other interested parties and allow at least three months, unless circumstances require a shorter period, for representations to be made on it. Where publications cause changes to be made to other previously-issued publications, any such consequential changes will be exposed for comment simultaneously.
• All responses to public consultation exercises undertaken by the APB, apart from those where the respondent requests confidentiality, will be posted to the APB's website on the exposure draft pages of the publications section.
• Before publishing or amending Practice Notes, the APB will usually seek the views of external commentators in a manner similar to that for Standards. In the case of other guidance material the APB will decide the means by which it will obtain external views on such documents.

Communications

The APB website will contain:

• copies of press releases issued in the last six months;
• copies of all APB publications, including Auditing Standards (both current and superseded), Practice Notes, Bulletins, briefing papers and exposure drafts; and
• agenda for APB and Sub-committee meetings and minutes.