City Deal accounts delays ‘not good enough’

A Newport council committee has criticised accounting delays for the Cardiff Capital Region’s City Deal as “not good enough”.

The local authority’s head of finance has warned further delays could have ever more serious impacts on the council’s own ability to publish its accounts.

The Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) is a joint venture between ten local authorities in South East Wales and focuses on regional investment and prosperity.

Its work is overseen by a corporate joint committee, or CJC.

Newport’s audit committee was told the council had not yet received the CCR City Deal accounts for 2023/24.

“Are you surprised at the delay?” committee member Don Reed asked officers, adding: “I’m surprised, or am I missing something?”

“Obviously they’re late, but they’ve been late for the second or third year,” replied Meirion Rushworth, the council’s head of finance. “Are we surprised? No, because it’s happened before. We are kept up to date with how they are working with Audit Wales to move that on. We’re not surprised because we’ve been kept abreast of things.”

He added: “Is it a problem? Yes of course it is, and the CJC is working with Audit Wales to resolve the position. Will it have an impact on our accounts and all the other accounts? It might do, and that is still an ongoing conversation.”

Har Ping Boey, the council’s assistant head of finance, said she understood the accounts for 2023/24 were still subject to auditing, but those for 2024/25 would be signed off by October.

Committee chairman Gareth Chapman said he shared Mr Reed’s views on the delays.

“It’s just not good enough, to be in a position three years on, and they can’t get their accounts sorted,” Mr Chapman said.

The committee agreed unanimously with his proposals to write to Wales’ auditor general, and the chief executive of the CJC, expressing their “concern that the accounts again this year have not been delivered and therefore we at Newport are obviously having to make assumptions of some kind”.

Mr Chapman added: “If elected members in this council thought Meirion and his team are going to be two or three months late in delivering the accounts, it wouldn’t be acceptable, would it? So why should we as a council accept it from the City Deal?”

The chairman said the nation’s auditor general had “written to one authority saying it could be a misstatement in the accounts shortly because of the value of it – so if he’s raising concern, I think we ought to raise concern”. 

“It is becoming more material every single year, and there will come a point when the auditors will not be signing off our accounts,” Mr Rushworth added.

The CCR was contacted for comment.