Corby Borough Council accounts still not signed off - almost three years after the authority was dissolved

A councillor has called a former Northamptonshire council’s external auditing process ‘pathetic’ after they were told the final accounts are still awaiting sign-off – almost three years after the authority was dissolved.

North Northamptonshire Council’s (NNC) audit and governance committee was informed that auditors from Ernst & Young (EY) are still reviewing the Corby Borough books, despite promises that it would be completed at the end of last year.

Claire Edwards, NNC’s assistant director of finance, said that ‘disappointingly’ there were five items from the former council’s statements still left to go through professional review.

And she added: “It’s not a very good update and we are very disappointed from an officer’s perspective - we have been promised that these accounts were supposed to be done and dusted prior to Christmas and we’re still waiting.”

Cllr Richard Levell called the state of affairs ‘completely pathetic’, asking why the auditors weren’t able to ‘get their act together to make a decision’.

The now-defunct Corby Borough Council was disbanded in April 2021 to bring county services under the new North Northamptonshire Council.

The closing accounts were due to be presented six months ago in August 2023 after members of the committee imposed an end-of-July deadline.

Committee members were told the accounts weren’t ready due to delays and a further extension to the end of September was granted - evidently another deadline that hasn’t been met.

A spokesman for EY said that they cannot comment on the organisations that they audit, but that their ‘priority continues to be the delivery of high quality audits’.

Cllr Andrew Weatherill, chairman of the audit and governance committee, said at the meeting: “I can’t express how disappointed I am that the people from EY have failed to deliver again and again and again.

“They tell us that everything is going to be done and it isn’t – it just seems to get pushed down the line.

"I think it shows a lack of professionalism not being able to deliver what they said.

“Our tolerance has eventually run out and I’m quite glad we’ve got Grant Thornton in the room now to be quite honest.”

However, accounts for the relatively new North Northamptonshire Council are not in order either as the authority has not published a single set of audited accounts throughout its almost three years of existence.

Partner at Grant Thornton, Paul Harvey, told the committee that the delays were in part down to incomplete legacy audits and disagreements over how an eye-watering £953m debts of the former ‘bankrupt’ county council will be split between the North and West.

A backlog in the amount of audited accounts being published is reflected nationally by local authorities as only five out of 467 received an auditor’s opinion on their 2022-23 accounts by the required deadline.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has suggested putting in a ‘backstop date’ of 30 September 2024 to publish all outstanding accounts, even if they are not fully complete. This is supposed to allow auditors to focus on more current financial periods.

Cllr Weatherill said: “If we don’t introduce these backstops everything gets shoved down that line again and again and it gets out of sync. Then the auditors can’t do the jobs they were meant to be doing.”

Chief finance officer, Janice Gotts, said that she was not ‘happy’ about the position, but recognised that it was necessary due to the clear levels of backlog across the country.

A government consultation on the proposed backstop is currently taking place and will close on March 7.