The Public Inspection of Accounts allows residents to scrutinise council finances and ask questions, but Hillingdon’s late publication of its accounts and failure to answer valid inspection questions raise concerns about how effectively this legal right works in practice.
What is the Public Inspection of Accounts?
What is the Public Inspection of Accounts?
Each year, councils are required by law to prepare and publish their annual Statement of Accounts and to make them available for public inspection. This process, known as the Public Inspection of Accounts, exists so that residents can see how public money has been spent and can ask questions about the figures and supporting documents.
For the 2024/25 financial year, the Council was legally required to publish its draft accounts by 30 June 2025, a month later than in previous years. Hillingdon did not publish its accounts until 22 September 2025, almost three months after the statutory deadline, and was the last of all London boroughs to publish its draft accounts.
Following publication, a 30-working-day public inspection period must be provided. For Hillingdon’s 2024/25 accounts, the inspection period ran from 23 September to 3 November 2025. During this period, any local government elector has the statutory right to inspect the accounts and related records and to ask questions about them. There is no legal requirement for residents to give notice that they intend to attend: the inspection period itself is the notice. Councils may request advance contact as a practical courtesy, but this does not limit the right to inspect or to ask questions within the published hours.
What happened when Ruislip residents attended
Three Ruislip residents – two of them committee members of the Ruislip Residents’ Association – attended the Civic Centre during the published public inspection period. The Council had been informed that we intended to attend, and the day before the visit we confirmed a specific time.
When they arrived during the inspection period, no finance officer was available to speak to them. Council officers later acknowledged this and apologised. It was subsequently agreed that any questions we raised would be treated as valid public-inspection questions, as if they had been asked during the inspection period itself.
On 6 November 2025, they returned, and met with the Director of Statutory Accounts, Pete Carpenter, for approximately two hours. This meeting took place immediately before his meeting with the Council’s external auditors, Ernst & Young, following the close of the inspection period. They left a written set of questions with him at that meeting, emailed a copy immediately afterwards, and their receipt was confirmed.
Follow-up and lack of responses
After submitting the questions, we were repeatedly assured that responses would be provided. The sequence of events is clear and documented:
As of today, more than twelve weeks after the questions were submitted, we have not received a single answer.
During this period, the Council confirmed that the questions were accepted and treated as valid under the public inspection process. The continued absence of any response therefore raises concerns about how accessible and effective the public inspection of accounts is in practice — particularly for residents who attend in person, submit written questions, and follow up repeatedly.
Published below are the questions asked, unchanged, so that residents can judge for themselves whether they were reasonable and whether they deserved answers.
Questions as submitted on 6th November
General Questions
- What specific issues caused the delay in publishing the draft accounts?
- How are the reserves held and how did we not know the £14m wasn’t there?
Audit Opinion & Disclaimed Accounts
- What went wrong for the council to have so many years of disclaimed accounts?
- Can you explain what the “disclaimed accounts” status means in practical terms for the council’s finances?
- Is it correct that it will be 2027/28 at the earliest before the council can get unqualified accounts, and can you explain why it will take that long?
- What do you expect the auditor’s opinion to be for the 2024/25 accounts? Is there any early draft report or any indication of the opinion?
“Accounting Errors” & Balance Sheet Review
- The July cabinet finance report mentions “3 big adjustments” that were required. Can you please talk us through each of those three adjustments in detail?
- For each of those adjustments, can you provide:
- The documentation explaining that specific error?
- Who (by job title) made the original entry and who approved it?
- Why was that original entry made?
- One of these historical issues is understood to be the Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP). Can you confirm which adjustment this relates to and provide the detailed schedule of MRP charges, explaining what the specific error was and how it was corrected?
- Given these appear to be significant, long-standing errors:
- How did a decade of previous auditors fail to identify them?
- EY has been the auditor more recently. Why did they not identify these issues in their previous audits?
- Following this balance sheet review and the correction of these major errors, is there a specific report that provides assurance that no further significant issues exist?
Grant Thornton & Contracts
- Can you provide the details and invoices related to the £700k Grant Thornton contract that began at the start of the financial year?
- Why are these payments, and others to Grant Thornton, not appearing on the council’s public list of spending over £500?
- What exactly is Grant Thornton being paid to do regarding the “repair of Oracle”?
- What has this cost to date, and what is the estimated future cost?
Exit Payments (Compensation for Loss of Office)
- Can you confirm the total amount paid in “compensation for loss of office” or exit payments over the last two years?
- Why is so much being spent on exiting senior officers?
- Specifically, what was the “compensation for loss of office” payment made to the former CFO, Andy Evans?
- Who made the decision to pay him off, and why?
- What is the governance process for these decisions? Given he was a statutory officer, was the Employment Committee involved and was that statutory process followed?
Reported Savings & Reserves
- The council has reported average savings of £13.5 million. Can we see documentation showing how these figures were calculated and who produced them?
- Can we see the reported numbers against the budgeted savings targets for the last 15 years? If not that long, how far back can we go? The £14.1m correction was from that far back.
- If that’s not possible, can we see the schedule of reserves movements and drawdowns for the last 15 years? We want to understand why these drawdowns were needed and if they were used to mask overspends or non-delivery of savings.
Borrowing & Capital Receipts
- What is the reason for the £170 million increase in the council’s borrowing?
- Can we see the amount of capital receipts received in 2024/25?
- From which assets did these come, and in what year were those assets sold?
- How much in “transformation costs” was charged against these, and what did that achieve?
- Was there a shortfall in capital receipts? If so, how much was it and where was that shortfall charged?
Deficits & Fund Recharges
- HRA: Can we see the schedule that supports the recharge from the General Fund to the Housing Revenue Account for the last 3 years, broken down by what is being charged and on what basis?
- DSG: What went wrong with the Dedicated Schools Grant SEND deficit, and why does this deficit continue?
- DSG: What have the General Fund service recharges been to the DSG for the last 4 years?
- Collection Fund: What caused the deficit in the Collection Fund? Who made the entries and why, and how will this impact the budget in 2026/27?
Photo by Johanél Lintvelt
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