AUDITORS QUESTION COUNCIL ACCOUNTS

By Phil Spreadsheets

IT’S more than 600 days since Carlisle City Council was abolished, yet its increasingly whiffy final accounts won’t be published until next month.

The long overdue books for 2022-23 should have been signed off a year ago but haven’t because of a lack of staff at struggling Crumberland Council.

Following local government disorganisation in Cumbria, overworked finance teams had to pick up Carlisle’s accounts along with the gigantic dog turd left behind by the disintegrating Copeland Borough Council.

Since then, legal accounting deadlines have been missed and Crumberland Council has again been slapped with an “improvement” recommendation by external auditors.

Accountants Grant Thornton – brought in by Crumberland to run the rule over Carlisle’s elderly accounts – have not been able to fully sign them off without a big fat caveat.

The auditors huffed: “We have not been able to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence to conclude that the authority’s financial statements for the year ended March 31, 2023, are free from material misstatement.”

The use of auditors is supposed to ensure “transparency, accountability and inspire public confidence in Local Government finances”.

Finance bosses at Crumberland have assured Grant Thornton that the dusty Carlisle accounts for 2022-23 give a “true and fair view…to the best of our knowledge“.

How wonderfully reassuring for Carlisle taxpayers!

They coughed up £8.6 million in Council Tax to the old city council during 2022-23 as business owners handed over £4.5m in rates.

(Ironically, the council can always locate sufficient numbers of staff when it comes to sending out council tax bills!)

Meanwhile, the experts at Grant Thornton will correctly walk away with thousands of pounds in fees for its “extra-curricular” auditing services as Carlisle’s geriatric accounts finally drop dead in public next month.

A LOOK AT CARLISLE’S LONG-AWAITED ACCOUNTS…

Carlisle’s old accounts being published next month make for jaw-dropping reading.

They show that the city council’s retiring chief executive, Dr Jason Gooding, trousered a golden goodbye of £186,000 for loss of employment. And that wasn’t all.

*In the final year of Carlisle City Council in 2022-23, he received a grand total of £329,000 which includes the loss of employment payment alongside his pay, pension contributions, and work-related benefits.

Nice work if you can get it – it’s 10 times the city’s average salary!

And please remember this Christmas to give generously to our councils – they are always short of money!

*No impropriety is suggested here or inferred.