Debate: Studying the regulatory space of public sector audit—the historical turn

The National Audit Office (NAO) is central to political life in the UK. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s (C&AG) decision at the end of November 2024 to issue a disclaimed opinion upon the Whole of Government Accounts was unprecedented. The NAO reported that, for the 2022-23 accounts, they were unable ‘to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence’ to support the balances for local government due to the crisis in local government audit (Treasury, 2024, p. 279): something that various articles in Public Money & Management have referred to down the years (for example Ferry and Eckersley, 2015; Bradley et al., 2023). This generated significant comment in the UK about the precarious state of local government finance but, interestingly, in this conversation which originated with an audit report, there was very little discussion of public sector audit.