Certification

Under the transitional arrangements, PSAA had a statutory duty to make arrangements, PSAA had a statutory duty to make arrangements for appointed auditors to certify annual housing benefit subsidy claims from local authorities to the Department for Work and Pensions. In certifying these claims, auditors acted as agents of PSAA and were required to comply with a specified approach. These certification arrangements ended with completion of certification work on 2017/18 claims.

This duty required us to charge fees for certification that covered the full cost of the work needed. We set an indicative fee for certification work at each relevant audited body each year. The indicative fee was based on the latest actual certification fees available. Because the amount of the work needed for certification varied at individual bodies each year, we reviewed and reset certification fees annually.

Comparative information on indicative fees for 2017/18  is available.

The department for Work and Pensions is developing is own assurance arrangements from 2018/19 for the housing benefit subsidy claim on tripartite agreement basis, and has issued further guidance directly to local authorities.