By Helen Mooney
1 October 2009
The system for certifying grant funding to local authorities should be reviewed and its value for money analysed, the Local Government Association has said.
Responding to Audit Commission figures published on September 28, LGA director of finance and performance Stephen Jones questioned whether certification was the most efficient way of spending public money.
‘We would question whether the work is really something that the public ought to spend £19m a year on, given that the adjustments made are only 0.1%,’ he told Public Finance.
The commission report, Review of arrangements for certifying claims and returns, said that since 2004 auditors had identified errors in grant claims worth £530m, comprising £381m in underpayments and £149m in overpayments.
The price of auditing these grants amounted to £117m in the same period.
It said it had also cut its charges for checking the grants by more than a third in the past five years.
Fees for the work done by auditors in certifying grants had been reduced by £11.1m in the same period.
A commission spokesman told PF that the commission did the work to ‘provide assurance to grant-paying bodies that the grants… have been used… for the purpose intended, or in the case of subsidies, are being claimed in respect of expenditure that is eligible for support’.
1 October 2009
The system for certifying grant funding to local authorities should be reviewed and its value for money analysed, the Local Government Association has said.
Responding to Audit Commission figures published on September 28, LGA director of finance and performance Stephen Jones questioned whether certification was the most efficient way of spending public money.
‘We would question whether the work is really something that the public ought to spend £19m a year on, given that the adjustments made are only 0.1%,’ he told Public Finance.
The commission report, Review of arrangements for certifying claims and returns, said that since 2004 auditors had identified errors in grant claims worth £530m, comprising £381m in underpayments and £149m in overpayments.
The price of auditing these grants amounted to £117m in the same period.
It said it had also cut its charges for checking the grants by more than a third in the past five years.
Fees for the work done by auditors in certifying grants had been reduced by £11.1m in the same period.
A commission spokesman told PF that the commission did the work to ‘provide assurance to grant-paying bodies that the grants… have been used… for the purpose intended, or in the case of subsidies, are being claimed in respect of expenditure that is eligible for support’.
