Catalogue description Ministry of Health and successors: Audit and Statistical Division and Local Government Finance Division: Audit of Local Authorities, Registered Files (97,000, 11,000 and other Series)

The division comprised the three departments which in 1899 had been combined to form the Audit and Statistical Division of the Local Government Board. They were the Audit Department, responsible to the chief inspector of audits and which carried out central administrative and clerical work associated with the work of the district audit staff; the Audit Appeals and Sanctions Department, which heard and determined appeals against the decisions of district auditors and dealt with applications under the Local Authorities (Expenses) Act 1887; and the Statistical Department, which was responsible for the collection and processing of local taxation returns, the preparation of parliamentary returns and the distribution of local taxation accounts grants. The work of these three departments was continued by three distinct branches of the Audit and Statistical Division, each under a principal clerk responsible to the chief inspector of audits. In 1951 functions in connection with local authority finance and audit passed to the Ministry of Local Government and Planning.

General and local authority correspondence relating to audit of local authority accounts is in HLG 57. Statistics of local government finance supplementary to those published in

In origin the district audit service goes back to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1844 which gave the then Poor Law Commission power to appoint district auditors to audit the accounts of the boards of guardians and prescribed for them powers and duties which have hardly been altered. Since then, however, their scope has been vastly widened to cover the audit of the greater part of the accounts of local authorities in England and Wales.

Besides its statutory audits and powers of disallowance and surcharge the service is responsible for examining and certifying claims by local authorities for grants from government departments. The cost of the district audit service is met in the first place by the Exchequer but is recouped from local authorities by means of a stamp duty calculated on a scale fixed by the Treasury.

This series consists of local authority and general files relating to the work of District Audit between 1919 and 1940.

The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834 enabled the Poor Law Commissioners to direct overseers and guardians to appoint officers to examine and audit the accounts of the parishes and unions combined into districts for this purpose; but it was under the Poor Law Act, 1844 that provision was made for the appointment of district auditors with powers very similar to those now contained in the Local Government Act, 1933. The District Audit Act, 1879 provided for the remuneration and expenses of the district auditors to be paid out of money provided by Parliament subject to recovery of the cost by means of stamp duty payable by local authorities whose accounts were audited.

When the system of district audit was introduced, it was not applied to the boroughs, which at that time were responsible only for a small part of local government expenditure. This exclusion still operates to some extent; but even when not wholly under district audit substantial parts of all borough accounts must come within the preview of the district auditor. A number of boroughs took powers under local Acts to apply district audit to all their accounts, and in the Local Government Act, 1933 it was provided that municipal boroughs could adopt the district audit system by a simple resolution if they so wished. Boroughs which have not adopted district audit have their accounts audited by elected auditors or by professional auditors.