Statement of accounts

Notice of Delay in Publication of Statement of Accounts and Commencement of the Public Inspection Period for Statutory Backstop Date 28 February 2025

The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, as recently amended, require local bodies to publish audited accounts (specifically, their accountability statements, defined in regulation 9A(9), which includes the audit opinion) by statutory backstop  dates.  The Regulations include a backstop of 28 February 2025 for 2024/24 financial year.

Under the amended Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, Councils were required to publish unaudited draft accounts and hold the 30-working day public inspection period for the financial year 2023/24.  The deadline for publication of unaudited draft  accounts to enable the publication of audited accounts including the external auditors by the backstop date was Thursday 16 January 2025.

The council did not meet the deadline for publishing the 2023/24 draft accounts, but did publish the draft statements on Monday 17 January 2025.  This was due to an unexpected delay in the completion of quality assurance checks to ensure that the  statements met all the relevant accessibility standards prior to publication.   

As a result the Council failed to meet the deadline to publish its 2023/24 audits accounts and external auditors opinion by Friday 28 February 2025.

The 30 day inspection period ended at midnight 28 February 2025 and will seek to publish 2023/24 audited accounts and external auditors opinion by 31 March 2025.

Notice of Delay in Publication of Statement of Accounts and Commencement of the Public Inspection Period for Statutory Backstop Date 28 February 2025

The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, as recently amended, require local bodies to publish audited accounts (specifically, their accountability statements, defined in regulation 9A(9), which includes the audit opinion) by statutory backstop  dates. The Regulations include a backstop of 28 February 2025 for 2024/24 financial year.

Under the amended Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, Councils were required to publish unaudited draft accounts and hold the 30-working day public inspection period the financial year 2023/24. These steps were prerequisites to publishing audited accounts by the 28 February 2025 backstop date.

The council has not been able to meet the deadline for publishing the 2023/24 draft accounts in time to allow for a 30 day inspection period to be completed prior to the 28 February 2024 backstop date. This due to:

• An unplanned reduction of staffing resources within the Council
• The requirement to prepare multiple accounts simultaneously
• Outstanding prior year accounts remaining unpublished which prevents work commencing on accounts for 2023/24.

The Council will seek to publish 2023/24 unaudited draft accounts as soon as possible and publish the audited accounts as soon as practicable.

Notice of Delay in Publication of Statement of Accounts and Commencement of the Public Inspection Period for Statutory Backstop Date 13 December 2024 and 28 February 2025

The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, as recently amended, require local bodies to publish audited accounts (specifically, their accountability statements, defined in regulation 9A(9), which includes the audit opinion) by statutory backstop dates. The Regulations include a backstop of 13 December 2024 for financial years up to-and-including 2022/23.

Under the amended Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, Councils were required to publish unaudited draft accounts and hold the 30-working day public inspection period for one or more financial years up-to-and-including 2022/23. These steps were prerequisites to publishing audited accounts by the backstop date deadline mentioned above.

The council has not been able to meet the deadline for publishing account for 2021/22 and 2022/23 unaudited draft accounts in time to allow for a 30-day inspection period prior to relevant backstop date.

This was due to several reasons:

• Significant changes to the audit of local authorities accounts following Audit Commission's abolition resulting in reduced accountability
• Reduction in the external fees resulting in reduced capacity and allocated resourcing
• Lack of capacity within the external audit firms and ability to support audit requirements during specific times of the year because of the above
• The introduction of new auditing standards requiring more detailed investigations than in previous years
• Financial reporting and audit requirements are disproportionately complex for second tier authorities
• Added resourcing pressure to support the requirements to prepare multiple accounts simultaneously and respond to issues identified within those accounts
• Council - Resourcing and capacity challenges
• External auditors - learning and insufficient capacity issues
• External auditors - high staffing turnover

The Council will publish all outstanding draft accounts by end of March 2025. With the council's external auditors departing the Local Audit market, the council is working very closely with their new auditors Grant Thornton to ensure adequate planning and resourcing are in place in managing future audits.

Along with other Councils nationally the Lewes District Council has experienced significant difficulties in its ability to publish its Audited Accounts.  Currently years 2021/22 and 2022/23 remain unpublished.

The issue has its roots in the decision by the Government to abolish the Audit Commission which resulted in its formal closure on 31 March 2015.  The commission was then replaced with the current Local Audit Framework consisting of:

• Public Sector Audit Appointments Ltd (PSAA)
• National Audit Office (NAO)
• Financial Reporting Council (FRC)
• Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)
• Chartered Institute of Public Sector Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). 

This decision also coincided with a significant reduction in system funding that resulted in a subsequent reduction in the fees provided to external auditors to undertake the audit of local authority's accounts and at the same time the introduction of new auditing standards requiring more detailed investigations than in previous years. 

National Attempts to resolve this issue including a government review undertaken by Sir Tony Redmond, published in September 2020 and additional measures announced by the Government to support improved timeliness within the local audit market have not adequately addressed the issues facing councils and external auditors.   As of 31 December 2023 the total number of outstanding audit opinions nationally totalled 771 covering a period between 2015/2016 to 2022/2023.

The issue relating to the publication of the Councils outstanding draft financial statements and their subsequent audit are now subject to proposals made by the government to clear the national backlog of historic local government audits which have been developed by the members of the Local Audit Framework. 

These proposals were subject to a recent consultation exercise which ran until 7 March 2024.  Lewes District Council are currently awaiting the outcome of this consultation; however, details of the proposals can be found on the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities website.

In the meantime, the council is continuing to do all it can to alleviate this issue locally and is looking to publish audited accounts for 2019/20 in the coming weeks.