All Yorkshire and Humber councils miss deadline to publish audited accounts

Among the local authorities to have not published unaudited statements of accounts for 2022/23 was Calderdale, who blamed capacity issues for the delay.

Becky McIntyre, Calderdale Council’s Director Resources and Transformation, said: “The delay doesn’t affect the final budget position that we reported to Cabinet in July, and doesn’t impact on the Council’s financial standing and resilience.

“The temporary capacity issues are now resolved and we have completed all the technical work to produce the financial statements. We now just need to finalise some of the notes to the accounts, and we expect to present the completed Draft Statement of Accounts at our next Audit Committee meeting.”

Calderdale Council’s Audit Committee is next due to meet in December.

Not one of the fifteen local authorities in Yorkshire and The Humber delivered audited accounts by the September deadline. Over the last three complete financial years there are 25 audited accounts overdue at local councils in the region.

The data show only 15 of England’s 317 councils have published audited accounts for every year since 2019/20.

A report published by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee in June said: “The unacceptably high backlog of audit opinions for local government bodies may get worse before it gets better.”

The committee was told the number of auditors registered to undertake audits of local authorities – fewer than 100 – was “worryingly low.”

Delays to publication could lead to governance or financial issues at local authorities not being identified quickly enough to be addressed, according to the committee’s findings.

Dame Meg Hillier MP, emphasised the committee had warned in 2021 the local government auditing system was at “breaking point”, and pointed to examples including Thurrock Council - which effectively declared bankruptcy in December 2022 following risky investment decisions that it covered up - as a warning of the issues facing local government.

Gareth Davies, head of the National Audit Office (NAO), told a separate Parliamentary committee in June that “delays in [the] local government sector are directly leading to delays of entire central government departments.”

The negative impacts would be felt “across the whole of the public sector,” he said.

This is a big enough problem for local government and direct accountability at a local level; it also has negative impacts across the whole of the public sector.”

Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "The failure to file accounts is causing a transparency crisis in local government.

“It’s unacceptable that struggling Brits have to stump up for growing council tax bills when their town hall bosses either won’t or can’t show them what they’re spending their money on.

“Local government chiefs should treat taxpayers with greater respect and file accounts on time.”