Lewes District Council explains delays in publishing accounts, saying reduction in funding and abolition of Audit Commission are roots of issue

Visitors to www.lewes-eastbourne.gov.uk can see a ‘Notice of Delay in Publication of Statement of Accounts and Commencement of the Public Inspection Period for Statutory Backstop Date 28 February 2025’.

This message says the council was not able to meet the deadline for publishing the 2023/24 draft accounts in time to allow for a 30 day inspection period to be finished before the backstop date.

The notice says the council aims to publish the 2023/24 unaudited draft accounts as soon as possible and publish the audited accounts ‘as soon as practicable’.

A statement sent to the Sussex Express from the council said: “Lewes District Council (LDC) and the majority of local authority bodies nationally have experienced significant delays in publishing audited accounts. The issue has its roots in the decision by the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (CLG) to abolish the Audit Commission which resulted in its formal closure on 31 March 2015, replacing it with the current Local Audit Framework.”

The council said this decision coincided with ‘a significant reduction in system funding’, which meant a reduction in fees provided to external auditors to undertake the audit of local authorities. At the same time, the council said, the introduction of new auditing standards meant more detailed investigations were needed than in previous years.

LDC said: "The events of the pandemic also had a profound effect on the ability of councils and auditors to support an already challenging audit environment. It is also the view of the council that the reduction in funding had a significant impact on ability of the councils’ previous external auditors (Deloittes) to effectively resource audits for the council due an exceptionally high level of turnover within their teams – it is worth noting that Deloittes decided to exit the local government audit market.”

LDC said it has published audited accounts in the past five years and said the status of these audited statements since 2018/19 are: year 2018/19, published June 2022 (unqualified opinion); 2019/20, published June 2024 (unqualified opinion) and 2020/21, published December 2024 (disclaimed opinion).

The council said draft statements for 2021/22 and 2022/23 were published in March 2025 and April 2025 respectively with the outstanding draft statement for 2023/24 due to be published by the end of May.

The LDC statement said: “Accounts from 2020/21 to 2023/24 are subject to the UK government’s response to the national audit delays known as the ‘national audit backstop’, which are a set of measures introduced by the UK government to address the large backlog of outstanding local government audits. These measures include statutory deadlines for the publication of draft and audited accounts and changes to the Code of Audit Practice.

“Lewes District Council has been able to publish outstanding draft accounting accounts up to financial year 2022/23 with delayed 2023/24 draft accounts due to be published at the end of May 2025. Accounts for the year 2020/21 were given a ‘disclaimed’ opinion by external auditors because, as with many other local authorities nationally, external auditors did not have sufficient time to gather enough evidence to give independent assurance over the statements. It is anticipated that accounts for 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 will also be disclaimed in the same way. However, by doing so the council will have ultimately met the requirement for the national audit backstop, albeit delayed.”

LDC said: “The council expects a full external audit of these financial accounts to take place with the external audit of 2024/25 accounts due to commence at the end of August 2025.”

The council revealed the dates by which councils should publish draft and final audited financial statements in the future:

2024/25: draft audit publication June 30, 2025, final audit publication February 27, 2026.

2025/26: draft audit publication June 30, 2026, final audit publication January 31, 2027.

2026/27: draft audit publication June 30, 2027, final audit publication November 30, 2027.

2027/28: draft audit publication June 30, 2028, final audit publication November 30, 2028.

The council added that at its peak in September 2023 the number of council outstanding audits nationally totalled 918.