By the end of November the Local Audit Office (LAO) should be open for business. That is not to say that it will be fully functional – it always takes time for a new organisation to find its feet, let alone get into its stride – and it has a hefty agenda to navigate.
First and foremost is the task of recovering local audit. While a start has been made with the introduction of backstop dates for current and past incomplete audits, the challenge of recovering assurance remains ahead – complicated by the ongoing, albeit temporarily paused, programme of local government reorganisation, which will bring together authorities at varying stages of audit incompleteness and assurance recovery.
