SLOUGH Borough Council’s infamous 2018/19 accounts that were slammed for being ‘inadequate’ have been revised and re-submitted for inspection.
Many of the town’s problems stemmed from the long overdue 2018/19 accounts, which external auditors Grant Thornton refused to sign off and added statutory requirements for the council to undertake.
Grant Thornton found the local authority’s finance team had ‘insufficient skills or capacity’ to produce statements or working papers of quality and had ‘inadequate’ governance arrangements over its subsidiary and joint venture companies.
Following further digging by Slough’s chief finance officer Steven Mair and his team, the council was forced to issue a section 114, effectively declaring bankruptcy, where the authority is facing £760m in borrowing debt and a £479m blackhole due to historic accounting errors and bad financial advice.
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The council has now revisited the 2018/19 accounts as it is needed to give the government confidence in Slough’s financial position and give the council its requested capitalisation direction, which would allow the capital gained from asset sales to be used for day-to-day services.
Cllr Rob Anderson (Lab: Britwell & Northborough), lead member for financial oversight, said at a cabinet meeting they have now submitted the 2018/19 accounts for Grant Thornton to inspect. However, he added this will not be a “quick job” as it is “radically different” from previous accounts and could take about two months for it to be finally signed off.
It is hoped that when signed off, this will provide a strong baseline for the accounts after 2018/19 and will close those accounts “much quicker”.
The plan is to complete the 2019/20 accounts by the end of September, the 2020/21 accounts by December 31, and close the following year’s books by March 31.
Speaking at the meeting on Monday, July 18, Cllr Anderson said: “I am confident the team has done 80 per cent of it right [2018/19 accounts] and that means we can go on and correct the 2019/20 accounts even before the auditors signed that one off and use it as a rolling process if they [external auditors] do find things they want changing in the 2018/19 accounts, then we know we can change those immediately in the 2019/20 accounts.
“By the time we come to the position when we’ve got those figures ready to give to them, we should have picked up 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the issues because we’ve worked with them on the 2018/19 ones.”
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Council leader James Swindlehurst (Lab: Cippenham Green) added once all of the accounts are signed off, the council will be in a “better place than they’ve been in for five years”.
He said: “The sooner we can catch those accounts right up and be up-to-date, we will be in a better position than many councils in terms of what is passed and approved at that point.”
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