Annual accounts and audit
Oxfordshire County Council statement of accounts.
Statement of Accounts 2023/24
The Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015 require the council to publish the unaudited Statement of Accounts for the financial year ending 31 March 2024 by 31 May 2024.
However, the impact of the 2022/23 accounts not being signed off created challenges that affected the council’s ability to meet this deadline and the draft unaudited accounts were published on 28 June 2024.
The Statement of Accounts (pdf format, 3 MB) presents our financial position for the year ending 31 March 2024 and includes the narrative report and annual governance statement. The Statement of Accounts is unaudited and may be subject to change.
The external audit of the draft statement of accounts for the year ended 31 March 2024 has not yet been commenced by our external auditors, EY LLP, due to the complex set of factors contributing to audit delays across the sector. We have previously been informed that work on 2023/24 would not begin until mid-2024 due to the backlog of open audits.
This situation is allowed for by Regulation 10, paragraph (2a) of the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015. (See attached link: The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 (legislation.gov.uk)). Therefore, this notification explains, as per paragraph (2a), that we are not yet able to publish our audited 2023/24 final statement of accounts in line with the deadline of 30 September 2024, as per paragraph (1). The Audit and Governance Committee will consider the 2023/24 audit results, after which we will publish the final audited accounts.
Previous years
The law requires that our statement of accounts is signed as approved by certain members and officers of the council and that the audit report is signed by the council's external auditor. A number of frauds have been carried out against bodies that publish signatures on the internet and, for this reason, the signatures of members and officers in our accounts have been removed.