Quaestio
All sample reports

Sample audit

Local authority budget consultation

North Yorkshire Council — budget and finance

Open the original documentDeep Dive

This sample is stored deliberately to show the report format. Documents you audit yourself are processed in memory and never saved.

41% complete

Epistemic Completeness Score — 41% · Partially Contextualised

Verdict

The consultation presents a savings programme as achievable within the year while omitting the demand and inflation pressures that created the gap. Multi-year savings targets are stated as single figures with no sensitivity bounds — if demand for social care grows at recent rates, the projected savings are absorbed before they land. The document is not false, but it is selective: every figure shown is accurate, and the figures not shown would change the reader's conclusion about the plan's credibility.

Metric: Projected savings and budget gapTimeframe: Single financial year, multi-year targetsScope: Unitary authority servicesRuntime: 64.2s

01 / Boundary

Boundary sensitivity

38

Would shifting the start or end date change the trend?

The savings horizon begins at the point of maximum pressure and ends before the largest known cost drivers mature. A longer window reverses the direction of the net position.

Baseline used
Current financial year as the base for projected savings
Defensible alternative
A three-year rolling window including known demographic cost growth shows the savings absorbed by demand pressures

02 / Confounders

Confounder accounting

32

Which secondary drivers went unmentioned?

The dominant cost drivers are absent from the consultation document itself, appearing only in technical appendices the consultation does not reference.

  • —Adult social care demand growth at recent rates
  • —Inflation exposure on contracted services
  • —One-off reserves used to close the in-year gap, presented as recurrent

03 / Uncertainty

Uncertainty fidelity

44

Were confidence intervals and caveats preserved?

Multi-year savings figures are stated as point estimates with no ranges, sensitivity analysis or downside scenario — deterministic forecasting of genuinely uncertain quantities.

Deep Dive · second-pass review

Second-pass review concurred with the draft verdict and strengthened the uncertainty finding: the absence of any sensitivity analysis on multi-year targets is the document's single largest gap.

Section-by-section findings

  1. 01 · Foreword and summary

    Frames the programme as 'protecting frontline services' — a claim that depends on the savings being delivered in full, which the document itself does not substantiate.

  2. 02 · Savings proposals

    Savings are itemised as single figures per service area with no confidence ranges, delivery milestones or prior-year delivery rates for comparison.

  3. 03 · Reserves and balances

    One-off reserve drawdowns are presented alongside recurrent savings without distinguishing their nature — a reader cannot tell the structural position from the in-year position.

Questions to put to the author

  1. What proportion of last year's planned savings were actually delivered, and where is that shown?
  2. What demand-growth assumption sits beneath the social care figures, and how does it compare with recent actuals?
  3. Which of the listed savings are recurrent and which are one-off?
  4. What is the downside scenario if demand grows at the upper end of recent experience?

Counter-perspectives

  • Local Government Association — funding analysis

    Sector-wide analysis shows demand-led services growing faster than savings programmes across comparable authorities, the context the consultation omits.

    Local Government Association

  • IFS — local government finance research

    Independent fiscal research finds that single-year savings plans systematically understate demand pressure and overstate deliverability.

    Institute for Fiscal Studies

  • ONS — population and demographic projections

    Published demographic projections quantify the demand growth that the savings figures do not net against.

    Office for National Statistics

Run this on your own document

Your first three audits are free. Paste text, upload a file or drop in a link.

Start free