Firms are required to comply with the Code of Audit Practice (CoAP), and when issuing a disclaimed audit opinion under the CoAP they must have regard to the statutory guidance, which sets out that they should use professional judgement.
The firms have performed work to issue a disclaimer opinion in line with the CoAP/statutory guidance, which is why specific fees are appropriate for disclaimed audits. Furthermore, Ministerial statements said that firms would be paid for work done in good faith. We will consider what work has been done in total when determining the total audit fee – so if the auditor has not done all the work envisaged when we set the scale fee, the total fee will be adjusted to reflect that. At some audits, the total fee will reflect only the work for the VFM arrangements plus the work that the firm judged to be professionally appropriate to deliver the disclaimed audit opinion in line with the statutory guidance.