Part 1: Your Rights to Inspect the Council’s Accounts

In the days to come the council will open their accounts for inspection to you the residents of the district. As a local resident you have legal rights to inspect, ask questions about and challenge items in the Council’s accounts.  Your rights only extend to the accounts for the financial year 2021/22 – which is April 1 2021 – March 31 2022. And remember the inspection window is for 30 working days only. So if the accounts open on 3 Oct 2022, at 9am, they will close at 5pm on the 11 Nov 2022. There are no exceptions to this.

STEP 1 KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Many people are concerned about how councils spend taxpayers’ money.
The Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 gives people the right to look in detail at how councils spend our money in the financial year.

For 30 working days in the year anybody who lives within the district is entitled to look at how the council spends their money. Section 26 of the Act gives any elector the right to:

(a) inspect the accounting records for the financial year to which the audit relates and all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers, receipts and other documents relating to those records, and

(b) make copies of all or any part of those records or documents.”

Now this does not mean you can inspect anything and everything. There is case law on this matter what the council must let you inspect. The case law we refer to is Veolia ES Nottinghamshire Ltd v Nottinghamshire County Council & Ors [2010] EWCA Civ 1214; which summarized states:

Both ‘accounts to be audited’ and ‘relating to’ should be given a broad meaning: the former referring to and/or embracing the underlying record of financial movements kept as a running record but made up for each financial year, and the latter requiring only a factual connection between the accounts and the documents in question, and not an express reference or mention (see [85]-[103] of the judgment).

Sometimes the information you request can be “confidential”, and in the same case it was held that:

Article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention would, in the circumstances of the case, provide sufficient reason for needing to read down s 15(1) so as to make an exception for confidential information, subject to the question of justification (see [141], [162] and [166] of the judgment).

Councils are obliged to advertise when the audit period is on their website. However, for obvious reasons the council tends to slip the advert out without any fanfare, so keep an eye out – here

There is a guide to your rights published by the National Audit Office which explains in more detail what you can and cannot do on the audit.

WHO CAN AUDIT?

Any interested person can inspect the accounts. An interested person is a council tax or business rate payer or anyone who pays fees or charges to the council. If you are on the electoral roll you also have the right to raise queries with the external auditors.

It is normal practice to visit the council’s offices to inspect the documents that you have requested. You can send a representative to inspect on your behalf if you wish. That said the Council have allowed the audit process to be undertaken by email – annualaccounts@folkestone-hythe.gov.uk

LIMITATIONS ON THE AUDIT

You can only review costs which are incurred in the previous financial year. However, if there are related documents (such as contracts) which were created before this date then you have the right to see them.

The council can withhold items which it considers to be “commercial in confidence”. However, they should demonstrate why they consider that the information is commercially sensitive and be able to demonstrate why this overrides a public interest argument that the information should be made public.

You cannot ask to see documents which contain personal information, although you are able to see the salary of anyone in the council earning over £50K and in a senior management position.