Concerns over transparency surrounding local government finances have been voiced by the chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee.
Meg Hillier MP said made the comments in her third annual report at the helm of the Parliamentary spending scrutiny committee.
Hillier said that residents and tax payers can currently find it difficult to access information on the financial health of their authority.
She said: “In 2017–18, local government and local NHS bodies spent about £64 million on external audit. Yet information is not as accessible as it should be.”
Hillier also said that there was a “complete lack of transparency” over the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s informal interventions in local authorities with governance or financial problems.
She said: “For example, we were dismayed to hear that the scale of Northamptonshire County Council’s recent problems was an ‘open secret’, yet not something the council taxpayers of Northamptonshire were aware of.”
Elsewhere, Hillier said that good governance is becoming increasingly important because authorities are taking on greater levels of risk to maintain services.
