Councils' pension auditing slammed
Audit Commission says local government pensions need to be audited better
Sir Michael Lyons, acting chairman of the Audit Commission, has written to
local government secretary Ruth Kelly and asked her to improve the governance
and auditing of local government pension schemes.
There are 81 local government pension schemes with combined assets of £900m,
but a combined deficit of £24bn, the FT reports.
Lyons said that audit reports for these schemes did not question if payments
to the schemes had been made properly, and called on the schemes to be treated
as standalone bodies with their own accounts and balance sheets.