The formal complaints relate to financial statements made by the social housing provider and its subsidiaries Connaught Partnerships Limited (CPL) and Connaught Compliance Limited (CCL) for the year ended 31 August 2009. It collapsed into administration in 2010, with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs.

It is alleged in the formal complaints that the conduct of PwC and Harrison ‘fell significantly short of the standards reasonably to be expected of a member firm and a member’.

The hearings are listed to take place on the following dates: 

Friday 18 November 2016, Monday 21 November to Thursday 24 November 2016, Monday 28 November to Friday 2 December 2016, Wednesday 7 to Friday 9 December 2016.  

A separate hearing concluded in July 2016 saw former Connaught finance director Stephen Hill  given a five-year exclusion and former deputy financial director David Wells a three-year ban, after the FRC found the pair, who are both ICAEW members, failed to account correctly for a £4m short-term loan in the company’s 2010 interim financial statements.

Hill has admitted that his conduct was sufficiently reckless to have amounted to acting with a lack of integrity.  As well as the five-year exclusion, he has agreed to pay £133,397 towards the executive counsel’s costs.

Wells has admitted that he failed to act in accordance with the ICAEW’s fundamental principles of objectivity and ‘professional competence and due care’, and will pay £125,198 in costs as well as agreeing to a three year exclusion.