Exeter City Council has published its unaudited accounts for the 2023-24 financial year, marking the beginning of a six-week period during which local residents, journalists and other interested persons have special access rights to information related to the figures they contain.
During this period the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 and the Local Audit (Access to Documents) Act 2017 confer the right to examine and copy records related to the transactions recorded in the accounts.
Until 12 July the council must grant access to bills, invoices, receipts, deeds, property transactions, books and contracts related to the 2023-24 statement of accounts, with some exceptions related to commercially confidential or personally identifying information.
Local electors possess the additional right to ask the council and its external auditor questions about the accounts, to raise objections about the accounts with the auditor and to request investigation of specific matters of concern during this period each year.
The National Audit Office publishes a guide to these rights.
The 2023-24 accounts and related documents are available for inspection at the council’s Paris Street offices from 9am-2pm Monday to Friday and can also be requested electronically.
More details are provided by the city council’s Notice of Public Rights at Audit. Previous years’ accounts are also available on its website.
Both the city council’s 2021-22 accounts and its 2022-23 accounts are yet to be signed off by the external auditor.
A recent interim auditor’s report covering both financial years found that the number of “significant weaknesses” in the council’s arrangements to secure economy, efficiency and effectiveness in its use of resources, known as “value for money” arrangements, had increased.
The auditor also said that the council’s value for money arrangements had not improved in relation to what it describes as the council’s “alternative delivery models” and that its performance management needs to “significantly improve”.
The auditor’s inquiry into the council’s governance and financial and performance management arrangements has been broadened to investigate Exeter City Futures and several subsidiary companies, following the failure of Exeter City Living.
Among these are Exeter Canal and Quay Trust, to which the council leases much of the property beside the quay and canal at nil rent, and Exeter Science Park, in which Devon County Council, East Devon District Council and the University of Exeter are also shareholders.
At an Extraordinary General Meeting held last week the city council converted a £1.25 million debt it is owed by Exeter Science Park into shares in the company after the council’s finance director confirmed the company would be unable to repay the loan when it becomes due in January next year.
