Frequently Asked Questions

Following the abolition of the Audit Commission, the local audit system was deliberately fragmented across several bodies. The National Audit Office produces the Code of Audit Practice which instructs and advises auditors on their legal responsibilities. The Financial Reporting Council regulates the quality of audit work, while ICAEW determines the eligibility of firms and individuals to undertake audits. CIPFA/LASAAC prepares issues the Code of Accounting Practice.

PSAA’s role is limited to appointing auditors, setting audit fees and monitoring contract compliance. The creation of the Local Audit Office (LAO) will bring the regulation of local audit under an organisation dedicated to supporting local audit bodies, which we believe will provide a framework for more proportionate audits. This forms part of the Government’s strategic commitment for the LAO.

Once appointed, auditors are independent and determine the work required to comply with auditing standards.

The statutory  Code of Audit Practice (COAP) issued by the National Audit Office sets out what local auditors of relevant local public bodies are required to do to fulfil their statutory responsibilities under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. 

Local auditors must comply with the COAP. Para 2.6 requires auditors to apply the extant auditing standards set for the UK by the Financial Reporting Council as the relevant regulatory body and applicable at all audits both corporate and public sector. 

The contracts agreed with firms in 2022 run for a five-year term, with the option of a two-year extension. To ensure continuity and maintain auditor capacity, it was necessary to include provisions that mitigate the impact of inflation. This is a standard practice for contracts of this length and helps support stability and sustainability of the audit market throughout the agreement period.

The Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 requires that firms and individuals must be authorised to undertake the audits of the bodies specified in the legislation. This is managed by ICAEW, which maintains a register of approved firms and individuals.

For organisations that have opted into the PSAA arrangements, PSAA acts as the appointing person and is responsible for appointing the auditor. Those bodies that do not opt in are restricted to the same list of authorised firms that PSAA is able to contract with.

Where the statement does not include all fee variation proposals requested by your auditor, this may be because our review of some elements is not complete because we are waiting for further information. If we subsequently approve other fee variation proposals, we issue an updated statement.

The Scale Fee represents our best estimate of the cost of delivering a standard audit. We expect that general first-year costs are incorporated within the firm’s overall bid rate or otherwise absorbed by the firm. In cases where exceptional additional costs arise, such as auditing a PFI scheme, these are addressed through the fee variation process. Such variations are applied as additions to the Scale Fee rather than as part of the Scale Fee to be reduced in subsequent years.

The evaluation ratio of 80% quality and 20% price for an audit services procurement is consistent with other recently let public sector audit procurement contracts. It differs from our approach to the 2017 procurement as our market intelligence was that firms would not engage with bodies that did not value audit and used ratios of a low quality/high price rating.

We considered the feedback provided and confirmed our approach to retain the 80% quality and 20% price evaluation ratio in the report summarising the outcome of the June 2021 consultation on the draft prospectus.

The proximity of the backstop dates for the up to 2022/23 and 2023/24 audits meant that we received fee variation proposals for over 700 audits in a short period. We are still working to process all fee variations and we are doing all we can to ensure we do so thoroughly, effectively and efficiently. 

The firms submit fee variation proposals when they are ready to do so. We are therefore dependant on them providing these proposals, and appropriate supporting information, to allow us to complete our work. 

We may therefore issue fee variation statements out of audit year sequence, for example we may be able to complete a particular audit year but are still working on an earlier year. We issue a statement as soon as we have completed our work, to provide bodies and firms with the final fee position as quickly as possible.

Work on VFM arrangements comprises two elements:

• the core work to consider the arrangements in place included in the scale fee. The auditor needed to do this to be able to come to the binary conclusion that was in place up to 2019/20; and 
• the additional work required to produce the commentary, which is a Code of Audit Practice requirement from 2020/21 and is included in the scale fee from 2023/24.

The VFM arrangements commentary fee variation in the statement may be higher than determined for other audit years because it includes the scale fee element for core VFM work.

For bodies where the auditor has only completed the VFM arrangements work and the work to issue a disclaimer opinion, there is no separate scale fee charge.

Fees for new recurring audit requirements are only consolidated into the scale fee once we have sufficiently reliable information on the level of ongoing audit work needed. The audit work for ISA (UK) 315 (risks of material misstatement) and linked work on ISA (UK) 240 (fraud) has been included in the 2024/25 scale fees, but we process it as fee variations for 2022/23 and 2023/24 because the Regulations do not allow us to update those scale fees once set, i.e. after 30 November 2022 and 2023 respectively.