Recommendation 33

EY and Grant Thornton highlighted that the amount of work which firms were required to carry out in auditing local authorities looked nothing like that required in 2017, for example, in the additional work involved in valuing assets supporting pension funds and of investment properties.94 Grant Thornton referred to additional work required to reflect changes in auditing standards, in systems regulation, and in following the revised audit code of practice, and considered that these changes were introduced without recognition of the impacts on the costs to auditors. EY also noted that the contracts signed in early 2017 were different to the audits which auditors had to carry out when they started to deliver work against these contracts in 2019.95 The London Borough of Hackney said that the decline in audit fees had put pressure on audit firms, such as in trying to field a suitable number of experienced auditors, and that this mirrored a deterioration in audit performance over recent years.96 86 Q 42 evidence session of 20 May 2021 87 Qq 43–44 evidence session of 20 May 2021 88 Q 55 evidence session of 20 May 2021 89 Q 28 evidence session of 17 May 2021 90 Committee of Public Accounts, Local Government Governance and Accountability, Ninety-Seventh Report of Session 2017–19, HC 2077, May 2019, paragraph 20 91 Q 8 evidence session of 20 May 2021 92 Q 52 evidence session of 17 May 2021 93 Q 19 evidence session of 17 May 2021 94 Qq 19, 38 evidence session of 17 May 2021 95 Q 19 evidence session of 17 May 2021 96 London Borough of Hackney submission, para 7 Local auditor reporting on local government in England 19