Minutes:
The Chair asked Alan Finch, Senior Advisor, to introduce the report and the LGA’s response to the Review.
Alan said that the Redmond Review had been commissioned by the Government in July 2019 to look at the effectiveness of the 2014 Local Audit and Accountability Actwhich had abolished the Audit Commission and introduced a new audit regime for local authorities.
Alan explained that the LGA had successfully lobbied to get some changes to the Act, most notably the option for councils to opt in to national procurement of external audit through the Public Sector Audit and Appointments Ltd (PSAA), which 98% of councils had done. However, he said that a major problem had emerged in recent months with the widespread delay to the sign off of 2018/19 local authority accounts. This issue had previously been discussed at recent meetings of the Resources Board and was also flagged up as a major concern by the Leadership, and Improvement and innovation Boards, when the LGA response to the Redmond Review was discussed there. Therefore, Alan said that this issue was a major focus for the LGA’s formal response and, was considered to be largely a consequence of bringing the audit deadline forward to 31 July and additional due diligence that was being demanded of auditors. Alan reiterated the LGA’s view that the deadline should be put back to the end of September.
The following comments and questions were raised by Board members:
· The delays to audits were considered to be an issue of lack of capacity, not any particular problem with the process itself. Alan said that this had been an issue for some time and that the Redmond Review was a good opportunity for councils to apply pressure to get a resolution. He added that specific training and qualifications were required to carry out local authority audits and so it wouldn’t necessarily be a quick process to increase capacity.
· There was agreement that the audit deadline needed to be moved back to September.
· It was suggested that more needed to be done to take the views of town and parish councils into account as part of the review. Alan said that he would include more about this in the final response.
Decision:
That subject to the above comments, the submission to the call for evidence was approved.
Actions:
Officers to submit the consultation response, as amended, to the Redmond Review.