We issued a qualified ‘true and fair’ opinion on the Health Board’s 2021-22 accounts, because we could not obtain sufficient appropriate evidence that specific accruals, payables and expenditure were accurately stated and accounted for in the correct accounting period.

We also qualified my ‘regularity’ opinion as the Health Board again failed to meet its financial duty to break-even over a three-year period, and (along with eight other NHS bodies in Wales) incurred irregular expenditure in year in complying with a direction by Ministers to fund clinicians’ pensions tax liabilities.