By Richard Johnstone | 15 May 2014
Grant Thornton has received CIPFA’s Cliff Nicholson Award in recognition of the firm’s work with Oldham Council to quicken the sign-off of the authority’s accounts.
The auditor’s Manchester office worked with Oldham to improve the closedown and audit of the local authority’s final accounts. They successfully brought forward the date of the audit opinion for the 2012/13 accounts by a month to May 31 2013 – the earliest for any local government body in England.
Sarah Howard, head of public sector assurance at Grant Thornton, said its audit team had worked with Oldham Council to bring forward the audit opinion date, allowing it to publish its accounts in record time.
‘To do this we had to remodel the audit, looking for new ways to gain the necessary assurance in a different way and a much shorter timescale,’ she added.
The judges also awarded highly commended status to two further entries. The internal audit team at Jephson Housing Association Group was recognised for improving health and safety audits by training auditors in specialised health and safety qualifications. Judges also commended the West Midlands Assurance Service – a NHS internal audit consortium hosted be the West Midlands ambulance service – for its project to identify fraudulent applications for NHS-funded nursing and allied health profession training across 25 universities.
Tim Crowley, chair of CIPFA’s audit panel, said the judges were pleased with the high calibre of entries.
‘The winner and high commended entries show that innovation and excellence in audit occurs in both external and internal audit, and across different sectors including local government, housing and the NHS,’ he added.
The award was founded by Cliff Nicholson, CIPFA President in 1990, at the end of his presidential year to encourage the development of the audit profession and recognise outstanding work in the field.
