Major academy trusts’ rate of spending on auditors is seven times that of largest local authorities, DfE and council data suggest

Academy trusts are spending much more on having their accounts audited, for every pound of their general spending, than are England’s largest local authorities, new analysis by Education Uncovered can reveal.

In findings which suggest the academies policy may be proving a bonanza for auditors, the country’s largest 10 school chains paid nearly £1.3m to external auditors in 2017-18, on the government’s own figures. This translates as the trusts spending on average £1 to auditors for every £1,473 of their overall expenditure.

By contrast, England’s 10 largest local authorities, all of which are much larger than any academy chain, collectively spent not much more - £1.8 million – even though their total budgets were more than 10 times bigger than those of the academy chains. Council spending on audit worked out at a relatively small £1 for every £10,565 of total expenditure, meaning that the academy trusts’ spending on audit was proportionately more than seven times that of the councils.

In total, every academy trust whose spending on audit is listed in government data collectively spent £18.9 million on “auditor costs” in 2017-18, according to that DfE data. It appears that at least a large portion* of this may be an extra cost to England’s education system which did not exist pre-academies.

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