Powys council’s finance team has received a pat on the back for being amongst the minority of local authorities in Wales that got their accounts signed off within legal deadlines.

Earlier this year, the Auditor General for Wales, Adrian Crompton, contacted all local government chiefs to warn them that the “timeliness” of presenting annual accounts was slipping.

As reported in the Cambrian News, Ceredigion County Council were one of the authorities to fall foul of audit deadlines, with Mr Crompton saying Ceredigion had “difficulties in producing timely, accurate and high-quality accounts”, adding that insufficient progress has been made on the issues.

Mr Crompton’s letter, which was put before members of Powys County Council’s Audit and Governance committee on 26 June, showed that Powys was one of 12 of the 22 councils that met the Welsh Government deadline of 30 June 2025, to produce the 2024/2025 accounts.

And Powys council were one of nine of 22 councils in Wales that had their accounts certified by 31 October last year.

Gareth Jones of Audit Wales said: “The Auditor General sent this letter out against a backdrop of the deteriorating position across Welsh local government on statutory accounts.

“Those accounts are critical for public trust in sound governance and to support financial sustainability.

“Performance across Wales has declined and the Auditor General has highlighted the delays for example in England that has led to serious governance failures.

“It is an important and significant governance risk not just a technical accounts issue.”

He added that Powys was “performing well relative to the national position” and had met the deadlines to produce “timely and accurate accounts.”

Head of finance Mari Thomas said: “The team work extremely hard at this, and I’m pleased to have that acknowledgement in the letter, it was really good to see it.”