Audit Wales has set an ambition of returning the delivery of audit work back to pre-pandemic levels in the coming financial year, according to its Annual Plan, which outlines the body’s priorities for the 2025-26 financial year.

At a time of stretched public finances and intensive demand and resource pressures across the public sector, timely, high-quality audited financial statements are an essential tool in ensuring effective decision-making, good governance and accountability, and are a key element in the system of financial control.

Recognising this, a key priority for Audit Wales is to return the delivery of audit work back to pre-pandemic levels, after a deterioration in overall timeliness over the last few years. A three-year plan is in place to address this, of which 2025-26 is year two. 

Therefore, the timetable of 2024-25 accounts audit work for NHS and local government bodies has been brought forward to 30 June for NHS and 31 October for local government respectively, from 15 July and 30 November for 2023-24 accounts audit work.

Meanwhile, the timeframe of completion for local performance audit work has also been brought further forward, with the aim of completing a greater proportion of work within three months of the end of the year to which the audit plan relates.

Audit Wales has also set a stringent target that all audit opinions will be delivered by the planned deadline, and all audits reviewed by the Financial Reporting Council in accordance with its quality standards fall in the two highest audit quality categories.

Enabling Audit Wales to thrive

The Annual Plan also aims to prepare Audit Wales for the period after the completion of its five-year strategy, including an increased focus on technological developments, evolving auditing standards and developments in the overall scope of work including sustainability reporting likely to shape its future operating model.

Success for Audit Wales will therefore ensure that it keeps pace with the wider audit profession to maintain delivery of timely, high-quality audit work that remains compliant with professional and regulatory standards.

Increasing impact

Increasing the reach and awareness of Audit Wales’s work will help to further enshrine its reputation as a model organisation for the public sector in Wales.

As part of the Annual Plan, in 2025-26 Audit Wales will introduce a new writing style for reports and new forms of accessible and engaging content using digital channels. It hopes this will encourage more people to read, share and act on report findings, by ensuring that communication matches audience needs and by empowering audited bodies to come up with solutions that improve outcomes for local communities.

Adrian Crompton, the Auditor General for Wales, says: “The biggest area of our work involves auditing the accounts of more than 800 public bodies across Wales. Through the COVID-19 pandemic period, the timeliness of the delivery of this work deteriorated. Working with our audited bodies, it is taking several years to bring that large programme of work back to pre-pandemic timescales, but we are determined to do so and confident that we will. 

“With the public purse strings so tight, it is more important than ever to get value for money from every pound of public spending. In our local and national studies programmes, therefore, we aim to give even sharper focus to value for money through stronger financial and outcomes analysis.” 

The 2025-26 Annual Plan is the fourth-year of Audit Wales’s existing five-year strategy and also marks the last full 12-month period of the current Auditor General for Wales’s tenure, with a new Auditor General due to be appointed in 2026.

Audit Wales is the collective operational term for the Wales Audit Office and the Auditor General for Wales, who is the statutory external auditor of Welsh public bodies, including local councils, police and fire authorities, and the Welsh government, with the Wales Audit Office performing the audit work on his behalf. 

Around 300 staff are employed by the Wales Audit Office. Together, as Audit Wales, they are responsible for auditing the accounts of more than 800 public bodies and around £28bn of income and expenditure in the Welsh public sector.

Audit Wales also undertakes a programme of local performance audit work focused around four themes of tackling inequality, responding to the climate and nature emergency, service resilience and access, and well-managed public services.

Read the Audit Wales Annual Plan for 2025-26.