Council accounts: update November 2024

Every council must publish audited accounts each year, and Uttlesford District Council like many other councils has not hit this annual deadline now for multiple years.  The largest reason for this across the country has been a crisis in the market for external auditors - that is large firms of qualified accountants. This was recognised by the last government and by the incoming government. The General Election interrupted the process by which the last government was going to act to draw a line under this issue and get things back on track, which the incoming government has now been able to act on since July.

On 30 July, the Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution announced a revised end date for audit firms to complete audits for all years up to and including 2022/23. Previously the date was 30 September 2024 - the new date is 13 December. You can read the local audit backlog statement made on 30 July 2024 on the UK Parliament website.

In Uttlesford's case, this means the audited accounts that are due are those for the year April 2019 to March 2020 (the 2019/20 accounts) as well as the 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23 accounts. Uttlesford's backlog of accounts started because of questions relating to good governance within the council, which were the subject of a police investigation that took several years to conclude, ultimately concluding that no criminal charges were in the end appropriate.  With that original delay in the 2019/20 accounts, added to the national failure in the external audit market, no subsequent years accounts were finalised or audited either, as each year's accounts start with the previous year's accounts, so this became a knock-on problem.

To be clear none of this means there were any ever material problems identified in any accounts, for example no fraud or mismanagement has ever been suggested let alone identified, just that the process compounded the delays, leaving Uttlesford (like many, many other English councils) with a several year backlog. This is why the government stepped in nationally to issue a deadline of 13 December for these accounts to be finished, so that moving forward, all councils can get their annual audited Accounts publications back on track.

This means that Uttlesford District Council has on 30 October published its draft 2020/21 and 2021/22 annual accounts for the legally required public inspection phase.  The draft 2019/20 accounts had previously been published and that public inspection phase already completed.  The 2022/23 draft accounts will be published in a week or two's time for their public inspection phase.  This means that Uttlesford is now on track to complete the first three of these four years' audited accounts publication on 13 December, with the fourth year running just a few weeks later than that deadline.  Although we are sorry that we only have the first three of these four year's draft accounts published in time to hit the 13 December deadline, this has been unavoidable due to the workload concerned on so small a finance team.

We are delighted that we are finally on the brink of regularising our published accounts position, after so many years of delay, in common with so many other councils affected by this national market failure in external audit. Although it is disappointing that the audited accounts due to be finalised on (or in the case of our 2022/23 accounts shortly after) 13 December will contain 'disclaimers' - that is those not be fully audited - it is important to stress that this is the standard national position, and not because of any particular fault in Uttlesford.

As this external audit has caused such backlogs all around the country, and as new audits starting from now on won't have the solid opening position of audited accounts for previous years so much as accounts with disclaimers, it will take probably a couple of years to return to normality.  In future years, we all look forward to a properly functioning external audit market, so that Uttlesford residents (and residents around the country) can expect to be suitably reassured by seeing fully and properly audited accounts.

1 November 2024