After the surprise resignation of auditor KPMG earlier in the year, P&O Ferries has turned to a small firm based in Oxfordshire to complete its accounts. Just Audit & Assurance (JAA) has just four full-time employees, but is undaunted by the size of the job ahead, as it is part of a wider network of associates that it says it can draw upon.
Most famous for its operations between Dover and Calais, P&O Ferries carries more than four million passengers between the UK and mainland Europe every year. In 2022 it reported sales of £918 million. But speculation around the financial health of the company went into overdrive in March 2025, when its former auditor KPMG exited its role – with its latest filings incomplete.
As one of the Big Four – the world’s largest audit and advisory firms – alongside PwC, EY and Deloitte, KPMG provides a number of the most prominent companies in the UK with accounting services. The company operates in 143 countries and employs 17,000 people in the UK. When it announced it was exiting its role citing unidentified difficulties it had encountered with P&O’s latest filing, industry experts might have expected one of its Big Four rivals to step in.
But with P&O Ferries’ accounts for 2023 eight months overdue, the firm announced it had turned to a surprising source for help. Just Audit & Assurance (JAA) is a small firm of four employees, based in Witney – a market town in Oxfordshire. A specialist firm, founded to address “the specialist needs of the smaller company and charity audits” according to the firm’s website, JAA has its work cut out for it following the left-field appointment.
Late accounts
Auditors work to deliver annual independent checks of a company’s financial accounts, and make sure they are complete and accurate, to comply with the law. Failure to report accounts on time is subsequently a criminal offence, as it means investors, creditors, staff and consumers are unable to build an accurate picture of a business’ financial health.
But it is unusual for a company of JAA’s size to audit for a client as large as P&O. While the firm does consist of chartered professionals, another requirement of auditors is that they retain enough resources and independence to stand up to company directors, should they find discrepancies.
In the case of JAA, some commentators have flagged concerns to that end. Speaking to The Guardian and ITV News, accounting professor Lord Prem Sikka argued that a firm of four auditing a “giant conglomerate” posed “serious questions about auditor independence” – as the fees from the engagement would be likely to “form a large part of the firm’s income”, meaning those carrying out the audit could theoretically be influenced by “the fear of losing a major client”.
Just Audit & Assurance majority shareholder Jonathan Russell moved to quash such concerns, telling the press that he felt the audit fees of £1.3 million that KPMG charged to prepare P&O’s 2022 accounts were “a stupidly high number” – signalling his firm may be in line for a far smaller pay-day. Indeed, it was confirmed that the fee for the P&O Ferries audit would be around £265,000 – accounting for around 8% of their total revenues.
But as one of the firm’s two “responsible individuals” who are authorised to sign off audit reports, Russell added that he believed his integrity would speak for itself anyway, as he is “not money oriented”. As a result, he argued, “My opinion is going to be my opinion.”
Boutique alternatives
Addressing questions around the firm’s resourcing, meanwhile, Russell contended that JAA could draw upon a wider associate team of 35 people to audit accounts. He added that P&O first approached him to audit its accounts in February last year, after KPMG had already been informed it was being replaced as P&O Ferries main auditor – and suggested that it was indicative of a wider feeling that “audit is not necessarily now being delivered how it should be.”
Amid a tumultuous few years, the Big Four of Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG have been stung by a multitude of challenges, and spiralling costs. Having over-hired during a post-lockdown boom in demand, the quartet is currently engages in widespread layoffs, while reputational knocks – including some high-profile collapses of audit clients – have left some clients seeking boutique alternatives. A number of smaller, specialised professional services firms have recently launched to make the most of this trend, including Unity Advisory, Axiom GRC, Steppingstone and Pura Advisory.
Russell concluded, “I used Carillion as an example on a paper I was presenting about two weeks before they went bust as a set of publicly published accounts that didn’t make any sense to me. So you know, yes, you can have a big name, yes, you can have a small name. Does it mean that the audits done any better or worse? I don’t know. I can tell you now that the average experience in auditing of my staff is over 20 years.”