UK Government Forms New Audit Body to Tackle Local Council Chaos

The UK government has introduced legislation creating a new public body to hire and monitor local authority auditors as councils struggle to produce audited accounts on time.

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill was presented to the House of Commons Thursday. The legislation would create a Local Audit Office, marking a partial return to the system in place before 2015 when a single state body, the Audit Commission, was responsible for local government audits. Private audit firms have done the work since then.

• Local audit backlogs have mounted since private firms took over, with complaints over lack of capacity. ...