INDEX: Council Leader Covers Up £218m of Accounting "Errors"

July 2023

This is a series of posts in numerical order, click on any link to be taken directly to that post.

Summary of contents:

1 - Executive summary. 2

2 - What is City Deal? 3

3 - How local authorities should account for capital grants 3

4 - 2015/16 – City deal is accounted for correctly. 4

5 - 2016/17 – Correct accounting in the first draft accounts 5

6 - 2016/17 – Material, late changes in the revised draft accounts 6

7 – The additional £17.8m accounting blunder 8

8 – The A&A Committee approves the accounts without knowing their contents 10

9 - November 2017 – the CFO distances himself from his own accounts. 12

10 - 2018/19 – EY fails to challenge accounting treatment 14

11 – The £160m U-turn and £218m cover-up. 16

12 - The evidence for fraudulent false accounting. 19

13 - Cambridgeshire CC’s going concern position. 20

14 - EY’s retrospective objection investigations 23

15 - Conclusion. 24

Cambridgeshire County Council’s leader, Cllr Lucy Nethsingha has declined to explain why the authority failed to correct acknowledged accounting errors totalling £218 million that materially overstated the level of usable reserves in five consecutive years’ audited financial statements, even after the council was forced to make a £160m correction for the identical error in the following year’s accounts (2020/21).