Letter: GBC’s Finances Are Not One of the Many Issues to Be Alarmed About

Published on: 15 Sep, 2026
Updated on: 15 Sep, 2026

From: George Potter

Lib Dem borough, county and West Surrey Shadow Authority councillor

In response to: This Is What My Experience Tells Me

Mr Murray who wrote: Without Audited Accounts How Can the New Council Know its Financial Position?, to which Bernard Quoroll was responding, was apparently unable to navigate the GBC website. If he had he could have found the External Audit Plan for the 2025/2026 financial year. The plan identifies that the external audit of the 2025/26 will be completed by November 2026.

This follows the same pattern as previous years where audits follow on from the statement of accounts.

The suggestion that there isn’t reliable financial information to inform the West Surrey finance position, as far as Guildford is concerned, is nonsense. The audit process in previous years has confirmed that the key figures (total spend positions at the end of each year, outstanding liabilities, etc) are fundamentally accurate in the annual accounts.

Those in the know are rather more concerned about Surrey County Council, where the in-year overspend on Children’s Services is already £30 million, and whose finance officer initially refused to produce a MTFP (Medium Term Financial Plan) as part of the budget setting process, and about what the debt and asset sale end positions will be for Woking and Spelthorne.

So, as usual, it’s welcome to hear some sage commentary from Mr Quoroll on the wider local government audit context, about which he is utterly correct.

But naturally balanced consideration of the facts is rather less exciting than politically motivated alarmism.

Not that there aren’t plenty of real things to be alarmed about of course, it’s just that GBC’s external audit following the normal timetable is not one of them.