We help the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission with monitoring public money...
The Accounts Commission is the public spending watchdog for local government...
The Auditor General for Scotland is responsible for the audit of most public bodies...
The Accounts Commission is the public spending watchdog for local government. We hold councils in Scotland to account and help them improve.
We operate impartially and independently of councils and of the Scottish Government and we meet and report in public.
The Commission is responsible for coordinating and facilitating scrutiny in local government.
The Controller of Audit is a statutory post established alongside the Commission in 1975. The Controller reports to the Commission and highlights areas of concern.
Read more about the Commission's role, duties and powers (PDF | 47KB). - Opens in a new window
Follow us on Twitter @AccCommScot.
North Lanarkshire Council has ambitious plans for developing the area and improving services, and it now needs to work with partners to better involve and engage with residents and staff to...
Stirling Council’s services largely perform well, and the council manages its resources effectively. It now needs to get better at identifying where and how it needs to change to meet...
The Commission publishes financial audits on each council in Scotland and an annual overview report on local government, as well as individual reports about council services.
Our strategy and annual action plan outlines our priorities for the coming year. Read more about our strategy.
Find out more about what we do in our short video.
We've published our report for 2017 - 2019 showing the progress we've made in mainstreaming equality and achieving equality outcomes.
Our report found that Scotland’s councils are managing to improve and maintain most services, but with possible reduced funding in future, they need to think differently about how they deliver services to the public.
Clackmannanshire Council must take urgent and decisive action to sort out its financial problems, we reported last year.
As well as auditing all local authorities in Scotland, the Commission looks at any issues arising from those audits and how well bodies are meeting Best Value duties. Find out more about each of the areas below:
Controller of Audit update
The Controller of Audit highlighted that the Chair of the Accounts Commission, together with members of the Local Government Overview audit team, had given evidence at a recent meeting of the Local Government and Communities Committee.
Draft Annual Report
The Commission agreed that this report confirms how much work they have been involved with over the last year, with discussion including specific areas of the report, the breadth of the work undertaken and public perception and understanding of the work of the Accounts Commission.
The Commission agreed the report should be published on 31 May.
Draft Strategy, 2019-24 and engagement strategy
This yearly refresh took on a different perspective, with an emphasis on public trust and the importance of the new Code of Audit Practice and new audit appointments in 2021.
The Commission discussed this and the ways in which the Accounts Commission build public trust, as well as the importance of independent auditor appointments for local councils in Scotland.
The Commission agreed the report should be published on 31 May.
Best Value Assurance Report (BVAR) schedule for 2020
Looking in detail at the schedule, the Commission were given assurance from the Controller of Audit that if issues of concerns were raised by auditors in the Annual Audit Reports, this would be bought to the attention of the Commission. And, if necessary, the BVAR schedule could be changed.
The Commission approved the BVAR 2020 schedule.
Best Value Assurance Report on North Lanarkshire Council
A very full discussion of key aspects of the report took place between Commission members and the audit team. Questions and discussions covered a range of areas including the council’s vision, partnership working, local improvement plans, workforce strategy, community engagement, education and health and social care integration.
The Commission then moved to their private session.
Best Value Assurance Report on North Lanarkshire Council
Members discussed the report in their private session, following consideration of the Controller of Audit’s report, the outcome of which will be reported publicly as soon as possible.
Draft quality of public audit in Scotland annual report
There followed discussion about an important paper on audit quality, presented to the Commission by the independent audit quality team. The Auditor General and the Accounts Commission’s governance of audit quality is of fundamental importance to their roles. This important report details Audit Scotland’s arrangements on behalf of the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission to ensure audit quality is high. The report provides evidence that auditors have designed and implemented effective audit quality arrangements to assure the quality of their audit work. It also shows auditors have made improvements since the previous report. Areas identified to make further improvements are also detailed in this report.
The Commission approved this report, agreed that it provided assurance on the quality of audit work, and that it would be published on 14 June.
Our meetings are open to the public. Find out how to attend.
The public in general are our principal stakeholder but we engage with a wide range of others. Find out more about who we engage with and what our main activities are.
Who we engage with:
Audit Scotland
