We challenged the Department on whether the qualification would equip staff to make judgements that are quite different to those in private audits. The Department accepted that difficult judgements require experience and joint working with council leadership teams. We pressed the Department and the FRC on whether the new qualification would be sufficiently attractive to people working in private sector auditing. The FRC felt it would be attractive, while the Department also emphasised the changes the FRC had made to audit practitioner guidance intended to make it easier for people to switch to local audit.60 PSAA told us it knew people in audit firms were waiting to use this qualification to get into the local audit market.61 Audit provider Mazars however described the challenges its own training programmes faced keeping pace with the loss of qualified staff to other roles.62