8 June 2025You may not have heard of SAAA (“S Triple A”). SAAA is the Smaller Authorities’ Audit Appointment Panel. It works mostly behind the scenes. SAAA’s main job is to appoint your external auditor: either BDO, Fovis Mazars, Moore or PKF Littlejohn, and manage the contracts with these four firms. However, SAAA has a wider role as set out in its strategic plan. SAAA wants to support local councils to complete and publish their Annual Governance and Accountability Return (AGAR) correctly so that their local communities can receive assurance that public money is being properly spent and accounted for. To do this SAAA’s small team – the Chief Executive and the Corporate Servies Manager along with the eight Board members – are working with a range of bodies to support the improvement of parish and town council’s external audit processes.
Before last Christmas, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) conducted a consultation on changes to the Local Audit Reform system. Much of this consultation focussed on audit processes for principal authorities. The audit processes for these types of bodies were in crisis with many audits late or not completed, so it was natural that MHCLG’s attention would be on principal authority audit. However, parish and town council audit did feature in the consultation, due in no small part to SAAA’s hard work to ensure that MHCLG was aware of local council issues. SAAA submitted a detailed response to the consultation, working with the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) and the Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) to make sure all our views were aligned, and this has proved to be a solid foundation for ongoing discussion with MHCLG. The changes to parish and town council’s external audit will become clearer over the next few months, and SAAA is continuing to work closely with MHCLG to try and make sure there are good outcomes for all smaller authorities, including England’s parish and town councils.
SAAA is also working closely with and providing funding for the Smaller Authorities Proper Practices Panel (SAPPP), which was formerly JPAG, to begin a full review of ‘Proper Practices’ and the AGAR forms. SAPPP will soon be asking for your ideas on this so make sure you are involved.
Alongside NALC and the Association of Drainage Authorities (ADA), SLCC is one of the three member organisations underscoring SAAA as the sector led body. We are delighted to note the impressive work of SAAA and look forward continuing to work with them.
