Combined authority's accounts to be disclaimed

Audit work is still being carried out on Tees Valley Combined Authority's 2023-24 accounts

A local authority's auditor will be unable to give its accounts a clean bill of health, due to delays relating to its previous financial results.

Tees Valley Combined Authority's (TVCA) 2023-24 accounts were expected to be signed off by February this year, but accountancy firm Ernst & Young (EY) was unable to do so due to a number of issues.

The firm "disclaimed" the accounts, meaning there had been insufficient work carried out to determine whether they were accurate.

EY said the older accounts had had a knock-on effect on the 2024-25 accounts, which TVCA group director of finance, Jo Moore, said would receive a "disclaimed audit opinion".

Ms Moore said she was required to sign off both sets of accounts to ensure they were "true and fair" and it was "unfortunate" she was still having to revisit the older accounts.

Chair of the audit and governance committee, Darlington Labour councillor Mandy Porter, said the news of the disclaimed opinion for 2024-25 was "disappointing".

"I think we all thought that we'd be back on track…unfortunately we're not in that position," she said.

Since the general election in July 2024, there has been an emphasis on catching up with auditing council accounts due to a nationwide backlog.

In the last 12 months, TVCA's accounts for 2021-22 and 2022-23 were both disclaimed by its former auditor Forvis Mazars, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

EY, the local authority's new auditor, later said there would be a "significant delay" to the 2023-24 audit because TVCA had not complied with its statutory reporting obligations.