Tameside Council's Outside Auditors Could Not Give an Opinion on Its Accounts This Year. Its Own Internal Audit Team Had, By the Time Anyone Looked, Shrunk to Nobody at All.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. Forvis Mazars, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council's external auditor, issued a disclaimed opinion on the council's 2024/25 accounts on 27 February 2026, the second year running it has been unable to say whether the financial statements are right [1]. The same Auditor's Annual Report records a significant weakness in the council's governance: its internal audit team was worn down by departures over the course of the year until a single remaining auditor also left in November 2025, leaving nobody to carry out the planned audit work, before the function was outsourced to an external partnership from April 2026 [1]. A second, older significant weakness, over children's services, also remains open; the council has been under a Department for Education statutory direction since March 2024 [2].
A council's annual accounts exist so that residents, and the people who lend the council money, can see whether it is managing their money properly. An external auditor's job is to look at those accounts and say, in effect, yes, this is a fair picture, or no, it is not. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council's auditor has now said neither, for two years running. Forvis Mazars disclaimed its opinion on the 2024/25 accounts, meaning its report "does not express an opinion on the financial statements, and no assurance is provided" [1]. The same had already happened for 2023/24 [1].
Why the outside opinion was disclaimed
The auditor's own explanation is not a verdict on Tameside's finances specifically; it is about time. National guidance issued after England's local audit backlog, the Local Audit Reset and Recovery Implementation Guidance, set a 2026 "backstop" date by which outstanding historic audits had to be closed off, opinion or no opinion [1]. Forvis Mazars states it did not have sufficient time to carry out the procedures needed to rebuild assurance on opening balances carried forward from 2023/24, and so could not obtain enough evidence to form an opinion on the 2024/25 financial statements before that deadline [1]. Tameside's own Audit Committee heard the same explanation directly from the firm's audit manager at its meeting of 26 February 2026, recorded in the minutes as a disclaimer caused by "statutory backstop arrangements and insufficient audit evidence relating to opening balances carried forward from 2023/24", with work on property, plant and equipment valuations left incomplete [3]. The same minutes record no instances of fraud or unlawful spending identified in the work that was completed [3].
The second weakness: an internal audit team with nobody in it
The governance finding is a different matter, and it is about the council, not the national backlog. Every council is required to run its own internal audit function, separate from the external auditor, which tests its own controls and reports an annual opinion on how much assurance it can give. Tameside's Head of Internal Audit gave a limited assurance opinion for 2024/25, the second year running, and Forvis Mazars treats that as evidence of a significant weakness in the council's own governance arrangements [1].
The report sets out exactly how the team got there. After "multiple key departures", the function became reliant on temporary staff and could not deliver its full audit plan [1]. A new interim Head of Assurance and interim Internal Audit Manager were appointed in May 2025 to address the gap; shortly afterwards the senior auditor left too, and the one auditor remaining after that also departed in November 2025, leaving the council's internal audit provision dependent on temporary staffing with, in the auditor's words, team stability undermined and institutional knowledge eroded [1]. Cabinet approved procuring external support on 29 October 2025, and from 1 April 2026 Tameside's internal audit service has been delivered by the South West Audit Partnership rather than an in-house team [1]. The June 2026 Audit Committee minutes confirm the transition was under way, with legal and trading agreements in progress and an external team covering audit delivery while a new SWAP-qualified Chief Audit Executive was recruited [3].
What the auditor says the risk is. Forvis Mazars does not treat this as a paperwork problem. Its recommendation warns that without a functioning internal audit team, "significant control weaknesses may go undetected, increasing the risk of financial mismanagement, or regulatory noncompliance", and that it can undermine the council's ability to demonstrate effective oversight, leading to "adverse audit opinions and loss of public trust" [1]. The recommendation is that the council ensure the move to the outsourced provider is closely overseen and actually used to rebuild capacity, rather than treated as a fix in itself [1].
The weakness that was already there: children's services
A second significant weakness, carried forward rather than new, concerns children's services. Ofsted inspected Tameside's children's social care between 4 and 15 December 2023 and rated the overall service "inadequate", publishing its findings on 13 February 2024; the sub-judgements for children who need help and protection, children looked after and achieving permanence, and leadership and management were all rated "inadequate" too [2]. The Secretary of State for Education issued a statutory direction on 7 March 2024 requiring the council to cooperate with a Children's Services Commissioner, and in an updated direction has since recorded that the Commissioner's own July 2024 report found Tameside "does not have the capability and capacity to improve its children's services without effective oversight and support", appointing Andy Couldrick to the role [2].
Forvis Mazars records that this weakness has not been resolved. Ofsted's own December 2025 monitoring visit found Tameside's children's services "showing early but meaningful signs of progress", but the auditor's assessment is that it is "too early to say whether the actions taken have delivered the required improvements", and it continues to report the weakness as live for 2024/25 under both governance and the council's arrangements for improving economy, efficiency and effectiveness [1]. Separately, a joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspection of the area's SEND services, carried out in May 2025 and published on 3 July 2025, found "widespread and/or systemic failings" and required an action plan, which the council is required to deliver against an improvement notice setting a deadline of no later than July 2026 [1].
What the auditor did not do
The 2014 Act gives external auditors specific powers beyond the ordinary opinion: they can issue a public interest report, make statutory recommendations the council must respond to in public, apply to a court to have an item of account declared unlawful, or issue an advisory notice [1]. Forvis Mazars states plainly that it has not exercised any of them at Tameside [1]. The disclaimed opinion and the significant weaknesses sit below that threshold, which is itself part of why disclaimed opinions, now common across English councils caught by the national backstop, often pass with far less attention than a statutory recommendation would attract.
The money underneath
Tameside's own numbers show why a resourced internal audit function matters. The council's usable reserves fell by £18.2 million over the year, from £154.7 million to £136.5 million, against a revenue budget overspend of £16.9 million, most of it in children's social care, where external placement costs ran £10.6 million over budget and staffing costs £6.7 million over [1]. The council's schools budget deficit, the Dedicated Schools Grant shortfall concentrated in high-needs spending on children with education, health and care plans, grew by £14.1 million to a cumulative £22 million at 31 March 2025, and the council's own forecast puts the cumulative figure at £44.5 million by 31 March 2026 [1]. The government's statutory override, which lets councils keep that deficit off their main balance sheet rather than declare an unlawful budget, has been extended to March 2028, buying time rather than closing the gap [1].
Separately, the auditor records that a limited assurance ICO audit in July 2024 identified 33 urgent, 49 high, 20 medium and 4 low priority recommendations across the council's data protection arrangements, and that in December 2025 the council's own Waste Offences Register was found to have been inadvertently accessible to the public on its website, a breach the council self-identified and reported to the Information Commissioner, which did not issue a reprimand, enforcement notice or penalty over it [1].
What is not established here
The auditor's report explains why the internal audit team emptied out, departures compounded by recruitment difficulty, not a decision to run it down, and nothing found by this site contradicts that account. What the report does establish, in the auditor's own assessment, is that the result was the same either way: a council that spent a second consecutive year unable to get a limited-assurance-or-better opinion from its own internal watchdog, on top of a second consecutive year in which its external auditor could not express an opinion on the accounts at all. Both verdicts now rest on a function that, for part of the year under review, had nobody left to staff it.
Sources
- Forvis Mazars LLP, "Auditor's Annual Report, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, year ended 31 March 2025", February 2026. https://www.tameside.gov.uk/documents/d/guest/tmbc-24-25-aar-final-pdf
- Department for Education, "Statutory Direction to Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council in relation to Children's Services under section 497A(4B) of the Education Act 1996" (updated), August 2025. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68a5b0f52a1dfc29763d514e/Tameside_updated_CSC_Statutory_Direction_August_2025.pdf
- Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, Audit Committee minutes of 26 February 2026, published within the Audit Committee agenda pack for 23 June 2026. https://tameside.moderngov.co.uk/documents/g11876/Public+reports+pack+23rd-Jun-2026+14.00+Audit+Committee.pdf?T=10