Related Services

The 2007 Budget report announced that the UK Public Sector would adopt IFRS based financial reporting, which was seen as best practice and would allow better international comparisons to be made.

Central government and the health service produced their first IFRS-based financial statements for 2009/10. The transition was reasonably successful, with very few accounts qualified for IFRS related reasons. However, in many bodies IFRS is not yet embedded in day to day operations, and a report to the Financial Reporting Advisory Board in October 2010 identified significant room for improvement in lease and PFI accounting, accounting policies, and some disclosure notes. CIPFA provides a range of implementation support which can help organisations integrate IFRS data into mainstream systems, improve the quality of ledger information and reduce the year end accounts production overhead.

In local government an extra year was required to amend regulations to allow authorities to set Council Tax on the new accounting basis. The first IFRS-based financial statements are being produced for 2010-11. Authorities are facing similar challenges to those faced by central government and the health service last year, including lease and PFI accounting, component accounting, accounting for grants and contributions, changes to the group accounts boundary and disclosure notes. CIPFA has a range of services available to assist authorities with both first time IFRS adoption and longer term embedding and improvement.