The latest reports show that 29% of audits reviewed required improvement or significant improvement, a slight improvement on 2019/20 when 33% of audits were marked out as requiring improvement.

Big Four firm KPMG was criticised for its audit work on banking audits.

The audit watchdog reviewed 103 audits and reported that 71% were assessed to be of a good standard or requiring only limited improvement (2019/20: 67%).

Quality across the individual firms was more mixed than in 2019/20 and the FRC has published measures that individual firms will be required to implement in response to individual inspection findings.