Professor John Robertson OBA

Thanks to Brian McGowan for alerting me to this:

From the Canary factchecker today:

The National Audit Office (NAO) has declined to sign off on the accuracy of the UK government’s national accounts for a second time, citing widespread unreliability in, and lack of, data supplied by local councils.

The crux of the issue lies in the backlog of local authority audits, meaning only around a shocking 4% of English councils provided data deemed “reliable”. This is down from 10% in 2022/23 – which even then, was a dire reflection on the state of local and national public finances.

This breakdown signifies a watershed moment. It is now the second time the NAO has issued a completely disclaimed opinion on the WGA. Typically, isolated qualifications would signal concerns about specific figures, but this denial of audit certification reflects a systemic failure across the public sector accounting system.

Multiple contributing factors include the abolition of the Audit Commission and the transfer of audit contracts to a private sector plagued by specialist shortages. The impact of this is amplified by the pandemic, increasingly complex accounting rules, and bold local authority borrowing and investment strategies. In contrast, public bodies in Scotland and Wales, which still have state-run audit systems, have fared significantly better.

In England, of the 407 local authorities that should have submitted audited information into the WGA, 167 or 41% didn’t submit data at all. A further 55%, or 224, submitted data based on unaudited accounts. Only 16 or 4% of English local authorities submitted adequate audited data.

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2025/07/17/nao-government-accounts/

A reminder of how only Audit Scotland politicises its reports:

As they once more accuse the Scottish Government of ‘failure’ why do the English and Welsh auditors never do that?