‘Unpalatable but necessary options’ should be considered to clear the local audit backlog, the head of the National Audit Office suggested yesterday.
Giving oral evidence to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee amid a backlog of more than 1,000 local government audits, Gareth Davies said auditors should push ahead with signing off council accounts without resolving every query.
He said it should be considered as a ‘temporary measure’ to clear the backlog ‘even if it means we see high numbers of qualified audit opinions’.
Chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, Rob Whiteman, agreed: ‘I think there’s no option but to have a reset because the system has so much backlog in it.
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