SRA climbs down on Audit Rules | SRA Lawyer

The Law Sociecty Gazette has reported that the SRA has backed down over its proposal to remove the requirement to submit accounts rules every year. Instead, the requirement will only be where accounts have been qualified by an accountant for a mistake or an area of concern.

This is a major climb down by the SRA who faced fierce criticism after they announced that the Accounts Rules were to be changed, removing the requiremThe SRA will also seek to amend the Accounts Rules over the next six months to issue a fully revised format for the accountant’s report and change the circumstances in which reports become qualified.√جª¬øent for annual accountants reports. See this blog dated 3rd September 2014.

Firms will still be required to commission accountants’ reports within six months of their financial reporting period. The SRA has also decided that the 115 firms funded entirely by legal aid will not have to submit any accountants’ report, on the basis that their figures are already audited by the Legal Aid Agency.

The main criticism of the idea was that smaller firms can benefit from best practice learned by specialist accountancy practices who deal with law firms. The annual audit comes with recommendations for improvement which are a cost effective and efficient method of smaller firms continualy improving their methods of dealing with complex accounting issues.