No funded national capability programme for council finance professionals

16 per cent of English council finance posts are vacant, rising to 26 per cent in accountancy and 21 per cent in internal audit, with a section 151 officer retirement wave and 16 per cent deputy-CFO vacancies behind them. Restricting Level 7 apprenticeship funding to under-22s choked the main qualification route, since 92 per cent of recent starts were over 21. The LGA and CIPFA Local Government Finance Workforce Action Plan of October 2024, updated 2025, diagnoses all of this accurately as a voluntary sector plan without dedicated central funding. Local government has nothing equivalent to the NHS's One NHS Finance development infrastructure.

Finance capacity failure sits upstream of the audit crisis and of the financial collapses, because accounts teams that cannot produce auditable statements make everything downstream impossible. Rebuilding audit assurance by 2030 is arithmetically impossible without the staff to prepare accounts and respond to auditors.

An MHCLG-funded national finance capability programme delivered by CIPFA and the LGA: bursaried graduate trainee cohorts, a deputy-s151 fast-track, a restored funded qualification route for career changers, and shared specialist pools in technical accounting and treasury for small authorities. Philanthropy could seed a Teach First-style pilot for treasurers.

// Build together: Counterparty: CIPFA and volunteer host councils for a philanthropy-seeded 'Teach First for treasurers' pilot; MHCLG funds full scale.

Vacant finance posts sit upstream of the whole audit crisis, the LGA and CIPFA plan is ready to run, and only central funding is missing.