Recommendation 27

We challenged the Department on the sustainability of firms auditing £100 billion a year of spending by local government while relying on only a few hundred auditors with the requisite skills. The Department and PSAA recognised the challenge which audit firms faced in having sufficient people to take on all the work required in auditing local authorities.77 The Department had heard directly from audit firms that a shortage in specialist skills was a factor in their delays to completing audits.78 PSAA had seen that, within the four largest audit firms, some key audit partners had moved away from auditing local authorities to internal audit consultancy. Such moves had put additional pressures on the numbers available to lead audits of local authorities.79