AN audit of the finances of the former Copeland Borough Council is taking longer than expected, Cumberland Council heard at an audit committee meeting on March 25.

A full audit of the 2018/19 accounts for Copeland still hasn’t been produced due to 'a lack of submitted accounts', the committee was told by representatives from accountants Grant Thornton, who were tasked with the audit of the three former authorities.

Cumberland Council was formed in April last year from three local authorities - Carlisle, Allerdale and Copeland.

The delay in the audit has been put down to the complexities of closing down numerous legacy systems. Cllr Lucy Patrick (Harraby South, Labour) said local government reform is a ‘massive task’, and much of this is the ‘consequence of limited time’.

Copeland’s 2018/19 accounts have not been signed off due to ‘objections made by the local elector’ that must be investigated, the auditors said, and slow responses from former Copeland financial employees.

“I’ve been doing this job for a long time, and this is one of the worst series of audit reports we’ve come across," a Grant Thornton representative said.

“All things we might expect to be done reasonably have not happened in Copeland for a long period of time. Copeland was significantly below what was expected."

Cllr Brian Wernham (Stanwix Urban, Liberal Democrats) said: “It’s like a history lecture,” adding that there must have been a broader ‘cultural problem’ in lack of proper financial work at Copeland, and asked what Cumberland should do to ‘not fall into the same traps’.

The auditors said there were ‘absolutely failures in leadership and failures in resourcing capacity’, and added: “The lesson from Copeland is if you don't pay attention and don't listen to recommendations, you end up with reports like this.”

Cllr Joseph Ghayouba (Bransty, Labour) said when he was on Copeland council, he was ‘one of the people on the rooftop’ telling members something was wrong, but nothing happened.

Cllr David Moore (Gosforth, Conservative) said that a lack of clear mention in the report of the difficulty in recruiting when competing with Sellafield was 'disingenuous', and that a 'cyber-attack' at the council in 2017, in which massive irretrievable data loss occurred, had a severe effect on Copeland.

Grant Thornton's report said the attack had a 'significant impact' on financial reporting for a long time.

Cllr Andrew Semple (Cockermouth South, Labour) said: “We need an effective audit committee. We need to be able to stand up and say to our cabinet and executive what is happening.

“When you look at the hallmarks of a council that is incompetent, people are afraid to challenge... we should be challenging.”

All accounts must be submitted to the central government by September 30 and if they’re not submitted, the government expects auditors to take action, such as by making statutory recommendations. There is no other plan in place if it is not done, Grant Thornton said, meaning that for them the ‘worst case scenario’ is to have all accounts published by August 30 for there to be an audit of Cumberland.

Michael Green, director at Grant Thornton, said the 2022/23 audit for Allerdale Borough Council is on track for early- to mid-April 2024, and the audit of Carlisle City Council is on track.