Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government: Finance
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to page 95 of the MHCLG annual report and accounts 2024-25, published in July 2025, what the historic issue was to which additional budget cover was sought.
Answered by Samantha Dixon
The department had identified a group of assets listed as ‘assets under construction’ where the descriptions and associated capitalisation dates indicated they may already have been in use in prior years. This meant the department may have needed to make a correction in its accounts for this missing historic depreciation. This would lead to an additional depreciation charge in the accounts.
To be cautious, we agreed additional budget cover with HMT based on the highest possible cost this might involve. However, after further work was carried out, the actual impact was much smaller than expected. As a result, we did not need to use all the extra budget that had been approved.
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