Council sets out plan to overcome years of late accounts

Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Finance chiefs in a Welsh county are confident that they can catch up with legal deadlines for producing their annual accounts.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Governance and Audit Committee on Monday, April 20, councillors and independent lay members received details of the statement of accounts recovery plan for 2025/2026 and 2026/2027.

For years, and due to a number of issues, the council has produced its accounts late.

Head of financial services Gina Taylor said: “The 2023/2024 accounts were certified in July 2025, eight months after the statutory deadline, and the 2024/2025 draft accounts were submitted in February 2026, later than our agreed timetable.

“These delays have had financial consequences, with the prolonged audit leading to additional fees over and above the standard.”

She added that these extra costs were a “key driver” behind the recovery plan.

Ms Taylor said: “This plan is detailed, realistic, and is structured around eight key work streams.

“It focuses on strengthening capacity and technical capability through targeted training and supervision, improving quality assurance and earlier preparation of the accounts, and strengthening engagement with Audit Wales and the accounting team to ensure that any issues are resolved early and that we can continue to reduce the audit duration.”

Ms Taylor told the committee that the council would miss the statutory deadline of June 30 and the September deadline for auditing the 2025/2026 accounts.

Ms Taylor said: “Therefore, the plan sets out revised delivery milestones with clear commitments to return to the statutory deadline for the 2026/2027 accounts onwards.

“Progress of the recovery plan will be overseen by myself and Tony Hagland, the senior business partner leading on the statement of accounts, through internal monitoring.”

She added that the committee would receive “exception reports” if the plan slips.

“I am confident that this plan provides a robust platform for sustained improvement and that we can hit those statutory deadlines for the 2026/2027 accounts.”

Independent lay member Martin Veale said: “I would love to share your confidence.

“But I think a bit more realism should be the case; we are substantially behind at the moment, and yet almost magically we’re going to be perfectly OK next year.

“I’d like to understand where your confidence comes from.”

What changed?

He asked what had changed.

Ms Taylor said: “Processes have been improved and the team is now at capacity. You would recall there were vacant posts and we had a number of sicknesses.”

Mr Hagland added that, in terms of the historic “big issues”, the council was on track.

Mike Jones of Audit Wales said: “We’re nearing the end of the 2024/2025 accounts audit; we’re anticipating finishing that off by the end of the month, and if everything goes to plan, we’ll sign it off in May.

“I share some of the concerns about the realism of the recovery plan, as we were going to get the accounts in September, and we got them in February.

“There are a few mitigating factors that give me room for optimism – a lot of the systematic work has been done and that might help.”

He added that another cause for optimism is having senior staff pushing to get the work done, but he believed it would still be “challenging.”

Committee chairwoman and independent member Cheryl Hucker said: “Everyone will breathe a sigh of relief if we get this back on track.”

She asked for updates on the state of the accounts to be brought to all future committee meetings.

This was agreed.