Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 12
12
Rejected
Local audit purposes are to establish credibility and supplement information for accountability.
Conclusion
Within the broader rationale for the local authority accounting and audit systems, the purposes of local audit specifically are: • to establish the credibility of the local authority accounts, so that they can fulfil their purposes in supporting local accountability; and • to supplement the local authority accounts with relevant information and conclusions that are needed to fulfil the purposes of the audited accounts, but that are not part of the disclosures in the accounts. (Paragraph 60) The current audit crisis
Government Response Summary
The government explicitly rejects the Committee's stated purposes for local audit, arguing that auditors are not equipped to comment on value for money and that such an expectation would hinder efforts to clear the audit backlog. It points to Oflog's role in informing citizens about local authority performance.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
We do not support this recommendation. It is for local democratically elected leaders to ensure value for money for their communities and to put in place sufficiently robust processes (such as overview and scrutiny committees) to achieve that. Moreover, to ensure consistent application of such work that the Committee describes, would require a significant increase in resources and expertise. Auditors are not currently equipped to be able to comment on the value for money achieved by specific services, projects or programmes. At a time when there is significant pressure on the local audit system it would not be helpful in achieving the priority of clearing the backlog of outstanding audits to introduce a significant extra requirement on auditors. Separately, the work of the new Office for Local Government (Oflog) will enable citizens, local government, central government, and civil society to be better informed about the performance of local authorities. The information that is published will help citizens and civil society to hold their local authority to account and also help local authorities to identify where and how they might need to improve.