Moray Council's housing stock worth £215m less than thought after calculation 'error'

Moray Council’s housing stock is worth £215m less than previously believed after a calculation “error” was unveiled by external auditors.

The external audit – which has cost the council £369,090 – revealed a blunder the council made in 2020/21 when determining the value of Moray’s housing stock.

The mistake was then “exacerbated by rolling this value over the intervening years”, the report states, as the mistake was not picked up until this year’s external audit.

But it is later explained that this is due to council dwellings only being subject to full valuation once every five years, meaning the full methodology was not assessed in intermittent years.

Explaining the error, the external auditors report said: “We identified that the previous full internal valuation completed in 2020/21 was calculated incorrectly due to an error in the EUV-SH adjustment factor methodology, which failed to capitalise rental streams as required by applicable guidance.”

As of 2026 the council’s housing stock is valued at £281m, while it was previously believed to be £496m.

The report explains this impacted “unusable reserves” which can only be unlocked and turned into usable money if the assets are sold.

However the miscalculation along with several other issues did create “significant additional audit work” for the external providers who, as a result, added an extra £42,780 to the council’s bill.

The external audit report has been put forward as an “urgent” paper ahead of the full council meeting on Wednesday, September 30 due to that being the last day the council has to publish its yearly accounts.

This is because when the external auditor first returned the accounts with the lower-than-expected housing stock value, the report states council management “challenged (the auditors) to understand the decrease in value” which led to a late submission of the updated accounts on August 30.