Council fail to publish accounts on time for third year in a row.

For the third financial year in a row, Folkestone & Hythe District Council have failed to published their draft statement of accounts (DSoA) by the deadline of the 31 May.

For the the year 2023/24, the reason the council gives for the DSoA not being published, is as follows:

The delay has arisen due to a combination of factors including the previous year’s Accounts for 2022/23, which has not yet been signed off by the external auditor because of a delay in resolving issues in respect of technical accounting disclosure notes within the 2022/23 statement of accounts.

For the year 2022/23, the reason for the late publication of the DSoA was as follows:

The council has been unable to meet this requirement due to delays in preparing and finalising the Statement of Accounts for 2020/21 and 2021/22 and whilst these accounts have now been audited and were published in March 2023. These have caused resourcing challenges in 2022-23 resulting in a delay to the completion of the 2022-23 draft accounts and consequently in the commencement of the public inspection period.

And the Council were late in publishing the 2021/22 due to the “the increasing impact of COVID-19” as well. 

There are no consequences for publishing Council accounts late. However, in the private sector if one publishes ones accounts late, there exists the possibility of a late filing penalty

The Cllr responsible for finance & governance is Cabinet Member Cllr Tim Prater (Lib Dem) (below left). The Cabinet Member responsible for Internal & External Audit is Cllr Gary Fuller (Lib Dem) (below right)

    

The Council Officer responsible for the accounts is the s151 officer, Lydia Morrison (above right)

At the last Audit & Governance Committee held on the 14 May 2024, Grant Thornton, the external auditor, state in The Audit Findings Report for the Council’s accounts 2022/23:

The Council originally published draft 2022-23 financial statements in September 2023. The Statement of Accounts did not balance internally, and management provided a revised set of draft 2022-23 financial statements in January 2024.

During the course of the audit, we experienced significant difficulties in mapping the trial balance to the financial statements, and also challenges obtaining year end listings to support income and expenditure, and debtor and creditor balances. This caused delays to our audit fieldwork and put the audit time frame 3 weeks behind schedule.

The Audit finding report in 2021/22 also raised issues with debtor and creditor balances, so for two years in a row, the council has failed to get their debtors and creditors balances correct. Which is worrying. 

There are other issues highlighted in the Audit Finding Report such as

4 adjustments to the financial statements that result in a £1.24m adjustment to the Council’s Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement there is no impact to usable General Fund reserves.

And

Significant deficiencies in internal control identified during the audit

This last point is very worrying indeed. We hope that these deficiencies have disappeared in the 2023/24 accounts when they are eventually published. 

And least we forget, there are still outstanding objections to the accounts 2020/21 which have yet to be dealt with, three years on. 

The accounts for 2021/22 and 2022/23 were the responsibility of the former s151 office Charlotte Spendley. The lateness for the 2023/24 accounts is the responsibility of the new s151 Officer Lydia Morrison.

Let’s hope the objections can be dealt with soon and the DSoA 2023/24, can be published even sooner.

It’s not a good look for the Council when they score a hat trick for lateness in publishing their accounts. One could get the impression that the Peter Principle is alive and well in the Council and also they might (but we doubt) be cooking the books.

As always though, we’ll leave you to ponder that.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent.