Nottingham City Council could be named and shamed by government as full accounts years behind

Local government minister Jim McMahon pictured in a black coat and striped coloured tie
-Credit: (Image: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)


Nottingham City Council could be named and shamed on a government list if four years of accounts are not ready by a crucial deadline. The Labour-run council has not published a complete set of accounts since 2019 amid a backlog crisis for local authorities across the country.

The government announced in July that to clear the backlog, it was setting a legal deadline of December 13 for the publication of accounts for all financial years up to and including 2022/23. The government said any councils not meeting this deadline would have to publish an explanation and send a copy to the secretary of state.

The government says it will also publish a full list of councils that do not meet the legal dates. Nottingham City Council says in its latest update that there is a real risk it will not meet this deadline due to issues including a lack of permanent staff.

Glenn Hammons, from the city council's finance team, writes in a report being presented to an audit committee meeting on Friday (September 27: "The council has skilled permanent and temporary staff preparing the outstanding accounts. These are staff with highly specialised skill sets and there is a shortage of these skill sets in the market.

"If any of these staff were to leave or be unavailable, it would impact on the council's ability to achieve the timelines." As well as having to publish their unaudited accounts by a legal deadline, councils are also expected to publish accounts once they have gone through an independent financial inspection.

The job of appointing auditors to look through financial accounts was once carried out by the Audit Commission but since that body was formally closed by the Conservative government in 2015, councils usually turn to private sector firms to carry out the work. Nottingham City Council has spent at least £640,000 on using the auditing company Grant Thornton since 2019.

The headquarters of Nottingham City Council, Loxley House, in Nottingham city centre.
Nottingham City Council's Loxley House. -Credit:Joseph Raynor/Nottingham Post

Overall, five years of accounts should already have been published with the full opinion of an auditor. These run from the financial year beginning in April 2019 to the one ending in March 2024.

Only the first four years of these accounts need to be ready by the December deadline. For the 2023/24 year, the government has set a separate deadline of February 28.

The government says there will be "very limited and specific exemptions from the backstop dates" and announcing the move, minister of state Jim McMahon said: "We know how important local services are to our communities and how vital it is councils, and other local bodies, have the financial transparency needed to continue to deliver them. "

To meet the December deadline, the government says that auditors will not have to issue a full opinion for every year of accounts. Instead, the government says hundreds of 'disclaimed' or 'modified' opinions are likely to be issued, adding: "Local bodies should not be unfairly judged based on disclaimed or modified opinions, caused by the breakdown in the system and the introduction of backstop dates that are largely beyond their control."

Nottingham City Council has already agreed that Grant Thornton will not issue a full audit opinion for the 2019/20 year. For the following three years, the council's latest update says audit work has not even started on any accounts since 2020.

Labour MP Clive Betts, who chaired a committee looking into the accounting crisis at local councils, has previously said: "Serious delays in local audits mean that many councils are not fully sighted to problems while they make major financial and service decisions, with audit delays also leaving local taxpayers in the dark. Local public bodies are responsible for billions of pounds of expenditure each year, delivering public services that taxpayers rely on every day.

"However, the current format and content of accounts are so complicated that they are impenetrable to councillors and council officials, let alone the wider public." The government says it intends to set legal backstop dates for all financial years up to 2028 whilst the backlog crisis is resolved.