Why I'll miss the Audit Commission

Anybody in search of a cheap laugh at the expense of Cornwall Council could do worse than read the Audit Commission's Interim Annual Governance Report. Maybe it's just me, but is there not joy to be found in seeing a group of powerful people (the most senior officials who lead departments,) who each earn more than £100,000 a year, humbled by their call to the headmaster's study?

The Commissioner's report starts with the words "I am disappointed..." and goes downhill from there. Here are some extracts:

"The financial statements adopted by the Council on 30 June 2010 were incomplete..." "I have identified a significant number of errors and omissions in the Council's financial statements..." "This, together with the considerable number of errors, identified in the Council's accounts, means that I am not in a position to issue my opinion at this time."

The report issues a stern warning to councillors that they (and not the officers) are responsible for the probity of the council's financial affairs: "It is important that you consider my findings before you adopt the financial statements..."

When you look at the detail you can see why the Commissioner feels a bit fed up - even journalists know the difference between taxable expenses and non-taxable expenses (sometimes it's the only thing we're sure of.) Accepting that there were major difficulties reconciling information from the former district councils, the commissioner reports a long list of discrepancies. In a £1.2 billion organsation, a very small percentage discrepancy is still a lot of money.

A couple more extracts:

"The Council's data quality arrangements were weak during 2009/10 and performance management and reporting systems were not fully in place across the whole of the organisation."
"The Council did not have fully embedded risk management arrangements in place throughout the year and anti-fraud and corruption arrangements needed to be strengthened."

The bottom line, though, is that as far as we can tell (er...) the council does provide value for money in five out of nine "key lines of inquiry." Somehow, we're just about doing OK - even though we don't really know what's going on.

The government announced in the summer it was abolishing the Audit Commission.