Brent Council’s corporate director of finance and resources has stated that “it was not possible” to meet the local authority draft accounts deadline due to the “challenges” created by audit delays from previous years.
In a statement of accounts 2022/23 update, which is to be presented to the council’s Audit and Standards Advisory Committee today (6 June), Minesh Patel outlined that Brent was unable to publish its draft set of accounts by the brought forward deadline of 31 May.
He said: “Reflecting upon the council’s readiness to publish a draft set of accounts by 31 May, the council is not ready to publish a set of accounts of appropriate quality by 31 May and to assure the committee that this is a true and fair view of the council’s finances.
“This is in part due to the challenges created by the delayed completion of the 2021/22 audit: staff have been focused on finalising the audit and the 2021/22 accounts for much of 2022/23, and this has meant that it is not possible to meet the brought forward deadline.”
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This comes as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) changed the deadline for the publication of local authority accounts from 31 July to 31 May following a consultation in February 2023.
Patel said in the report: “The Local Government Association (LGA) responded [to the consultation] to state that the 31 May deadline was too soon given the current crisis in auditing local authorities’ accounts.
“Despite objections from [them] and others, DLUHC decided to go ahead with the 31 May deadline for the 2022/23 accounts.”
Instead, Patel stated that he anticipates Brent’s draft accounts to be published by 30 June 2023.
This comes as Rob Whiteman, CIPFA’s CEO, warned that many local authorities are concerned that meeting the publication deadline for unaudited financial statements will bring “considerable risk to their organisations and their professional standing”.
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