Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 28
28
Rejected
Paragraph: 128
Stakeholders desire explicit value for money opinions from local authority auditors
Conclusion
Local auditors are good at establishing the credibility of the accounts under audit. However, while recent changes to the Audit Code have made improvements to the commentary around value for money, many stakeholders want an opinion from the auditors over whether their local authority has achieved value for money for its services.
Government Response Summary
The government rejects the idea of auditors providing a value for money opinion on services, stating this responsibility lies with democratically elected leaders, and such a requirement would place significant, unequipped demands on the current audit system.
Paragraph Reference:
128
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.