About Audit Scotland
Audit Scotland
We work with around 200 government, education and healthcare organisations, making sure £31 billion of taxpayers’ money is spent wisely. So we play a key role ensuring that the people of Scotland enjoy high quality public services.
Through our independent audit and public reporting programme, we deliver robust, authoritative reports aimed at improving our public services. These support Parliament and the development and governance of public services.
Public Reporting Group
Around 80 people work in our Public Reporting Group. They are responsible for producing a range of reports to stakeholders that hold public bodies to account for their performance, and support improvement. In addition they collate and publish information on the statutory performance indicators for council, fire and police services resulting in a range of publications aimed at chief executives, councillors and other stakeholders. They also carry out audits of best value and community planning in Scotland’s 32 councils.
Staff within our Public Reporting Group come from a variety of backgrounds, with knowledge across a wide range of fields and sectors and experience of working in or with the public sector.
The aim of our public reporting work is to support democratic scrutiny of public services in Scotland, and to help audited bodies to improve. This means comprehensive performance reporting, challenging performance, supporting continuous improvement and responsible innovation, reviewing business processes, and spreading examples of best practice.
Audit Services Group
Around 170 people work within our audit services group. Almost all of our client facing staff are CCAB qualified or progressing through our CiPFA accredited professional qualification scheme. Our offices are located in Edinburgh Haymarket, East Kilbride, Inverness and Aberdeen. We also have major audit room locations at our larger client sites. Following significant investment in our IT infrastructure all major locations are now linked together via high speed broadband giving access to Audit Scotland's virtual private network. Our teams are responsible for undertaking annual, risk-based audits of a diverse range of organisations:
- local authorities
- Scottish Executive departments and agencies
- NHS health boards
- police, fire and other boards
- further education colleges
- non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs), commissions and other accounts.
For a full list of audit clients, visit our audit appointments section.
We hold responsibility for an audit portfolio which includes some of the largest local authorities and NHS health boards in Scotland. Our appointment is for a period of five years and all appointments were renewed in 2006/07 for this five-year forward audit plan.
This allows us to build a deep knowledge of our clients’ strengths, risks and opportunities for improvement through productive strategic relationships with each client organisation. At the same time, the size and rich mix of our in-house audit teams mean that we always maintain our independent perspective throughout the audit process.
By sharing knowledge and intelligence with colleagues within Public Reporting and Audit Strategy our audit teams are well placed to provide assurance on finance, governance and performance arrangements in individual clients while promoting best practice between client organisations. Through this work we hold bodies to account for their actions, support continuous improvement and help clients manage the risks they face.
Audit Strategy
This specialist group of around a dozen people are based in George Street, Edinburgh, provide technical support to our audit teams, deliver specialist technical training, procure audits and ensure quality reviews of audit work are undertaken regularly.
Corporate Services
Around 35 people work within Corporate Services, consisting of the following teams:
- Information and communication technology with a strong record of delivering business enabling solutions to our client & stakeholder facing teams.
- Finance with a culture of providing comprehensive financial management information for budget holders to plan fee income, resource management and spend.
- Facilities management and office services support.
- Communications and media.
- Human resources and organisational development work in partnership with each Business Group to ensure our people are effective, confident and able to deliver great performance for our clients and stakeholders.