Final audit figures for outgoing district and borough councils may not be signed off until 2022

Northampton Borough Council, Daventry District Council and South Northamptonshire Council – as well as the county council – will be abolished on March 31 to make way for the new West Northamptonshire unitary council.

A draft budget has been unveiled and is currently out for consultation, but the budget has been put together using ‘best estimates’ after it was confirmed that the final audits of the district and borough councils may not be signed off until later this year or possibly even next year.

At a recent executive committee meeting of the West shadow authority, Labour councillor Danielle Stone questioned if this could have any impact on the new unitary’s budget for 2021/22.

She said: “There are difficulties in closing down the district and boroughs and we’re running into capacity issues with a lot of interim staff as well as audits being delayed. I was assured last time that it was not going to impact upon our first year’s budget. I don’t see how we can present an opening balance until we really know what’s happened to all those budgets with the districts and boroughs. So I wanted some assurance about that.”

The Conservative leader of the shadow council, Councillor Ian McCord, said the unitary would be using ‘best estimates from unaudited accounts and bookkeeping’, and that should external auditors Ernst & Young have to make any tweaks, they were unlikely to be substantial.

The comments were echoed by Paul Hymers, a strategic finance officer at South Northamptonshire Council who is part of the team transitioning to the unitary. He told Councillor Stone: “Whilst we won’t know the final figures and the final audited figures for some time into 2021, possibly even into 2022 the way some of the audits have gone in recent years, we can be fairly confident about the level of reserves that West Northants will be inheriting subject to final details about disaggregation of the county’s reserves.

“There’s not going to be a huge shift in those to have a material impact on the budget, and any small shifts that there are we can deal with in the subsequent years. Nothing material should come out of the closedown process, and it’s worth noting that we’ve included £500k to facilitate a smooth and timely closedown of the accounts for 2020/21 both for the county and the district and boroughs including additional audit fees.”

Councillors had been told at the meeting that the budget, which doesn’t propose any service cuts but includes a maximum council tax increase, would ‘stand up to whatever is thrown at it’ in 2021.