When WILL Council accounts be signed off? (East of England Liberal Democrats)

East of England Liberal Democrats <info@eastlibdems.org.uk>

When WILL Council accounts be signed off?

January 18, 2012 9:10 PM
Originally published by Brentwood & Ongar Liberal Democrats

Audit 2 Councillors were told by the Tory administration that it could be early February before the Auditors work is complete and the council's accounts for 2010/11 are signed off.

The Council's response to the External Auditors Interim Annual Governance report would suggest that the Council didn't have a realistic chance of getting the 2010/11 accounts signed off on time. This is borne out by the fact that a number of actions will need to be put in place to ensure the 2011/12 accounts have a chance of being signed off on time.

The Auditor said:

"I have recieved several versions of the financial statements. Revised versions were provided on August 12th, and September 9th, and a further version on September 19th. None of these revised versions provided financial statements in the correct format with fully IFRS compliant restated and current year figures or a full set of disclosure notices."

Despite claiming to be the "real opposition", Labour stayed silent on this crucial issue whilst the major opposition party, the Lib Dems, asked some serious questions and challenged the Tories' handling of your money.

- Why did the Council employ interim staff costing £250,000 who were not capable of producing IFRS compliant accounts?
- Why were financial statements not in the correct format?
- Why were the statements not compliant with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)?
- Why were there so many inconsistencies, casting errors and why were several disclosure notes missing or incomplete?
- Why were the correct checks not made?

The Liberal Democrats are also asking what the projected audit costs for failing to get the accounts signed off on time.