Chamber and committees

That is helpful—thank you.

I am looking at the audit performance in terms of audits completed on time on a sectoral basis—we have touched on that, and you gave us an indication of some of the reasons behind it—and I note that there has been quite a stark drop over the past couple of years. If we look back to 2018-19, nearly every major sector was delivering audits on time. Looking at the chart, I guess that the figures were north of 95 per cent across local government, the NHS, central Government and the FE sector. In 2022-23, however, the numbers dropped considerably, with some areas performing better than others. The NHS was sitting at 74 per cent, at the high end of the spectrum, while the figure for local government was as low as 29 per cent. That is a stark difference.

Will you expand on what has happened over the past couple of years? Obviously, the pandemic is the number 1 factor and the buzzword there, but there was a drop in 2019-20, which was before the pandemic really hit. The numbers were already starting to fall in relation to the targets. I give you an opportunity to expand on that a little bit.

Thank you.

That is fine. You do not need to go into too much detail on that today. It is really just to double-check that public money is being spent wisely.

One thing that you pick up on in your annual report and something that you admit is that the ratio of people in the organisation who have declared that they have a disability seems to be relatively low in comparison with other organisations or indeed the national average. Can you tell me what you are doing to improve that?

I am sure that there are lots of disabled people who are very well educated in the technical space who might disagree with that point, but I understand the gist of what you are saying.

Presumably, it is the case that some of that work is blended anyway, with some of it being done by external auditors and some by your staff. Do they work together in that way, or are they very distinct in that respect?

We look forward to seeing those savings on the balance sheet in due course.

My substantive question—I am sorry that I got sidetracked with some other questions, convener—is a specific one about the amount of money that is being paid in fees to external firms. That has increased considerably from just over £7 million to £8.1 million. Your annual report seems to suggest that that increase of more than £1 million is due to a lag in the completion of audits, if I interpret that correctly. You can correct me if I am wrong about that. However, the amount of audits that have been completed has marginally reduced by a couple of percentage points, so it does not seem to quite add up. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to why there has been such an increase in the amount of money that is being paid to external companies.

Probably not that long.

That is great, and it is good news. That leads me sideways into another question, which is about your ways of working. The paragraph on that in the annual report is relatively short and does not really say much. We have had a lot of conversation about your high rent costs across your three offices, yet, post pandemic, you seem to be operating a much more hybrid model. Is there no way that you could reduce running costs rather than see them go up? They should surely be coming down.

I believe that you were here, David, for the earlier evidence session, so you will have followed that line of questioning. At any point when you were looking at the accounts, did any of the issues that we identified in relation to where there was quite large variance in the accounts raise questions?

I will refer to two examples that might help you come to an answer on this. The travel and subsistence budget went from £500,000 to the reported figure in the accounts of only £82,000, which raises the question of whether there was just a change in the way that things are reported—that is, whether the line that such things appear in has changed due to changes in accounting practices—or whether there has been a huge reduction in the forecast figure versus the used.

The depreciation figure almost doubled from £500,000 to £1 million. Did those things raise flags as you went through the accounts, and were there any conversations around them?

Are you generally content with the rationale and explanations that have been given, including what you have heard this morning?