WARRINGTON South MP Andy Carter says he is again going to ask local government minister Robert Jenrick to investigate why Warrington Borough Council’s accounts have not been signed off.
But while Mr Carter says the delays “highlights a dreadful culture of secrecy around the council’s deals,” and “fuels questions around trust and honesty by senior Warrington Labour politicians,” Leader of the Council Cllr Russ Bowden hit back blaming “fundamental failures in the audit system,” due to the Government’s abolition of the Audit Commission.
The ongoing issue follows serious concerns raised by Information Commission Office and local resident Richard Buttrey over lengthy delays in Freedom of Information requests relating to the council’s controversial investment in the holding company of Redwood Bank, which has resulted in the accounts not yet being signed off by the auditor.
Mr Carter said “We cannot have a situation where local authorities borrow vast sums of money but then cannot be held accountable because they hide behind so-called exemptions. This isn’t Monopoly money, it £1.6bn of debt and again this week we see a Labour Council, this time in Slough effectively declaring itself bankrupt because of historic accounting errors.
“I’m afraid this letter from the ICO highlights a dreadful culture of secrecy around the council’s deals. It fuels questions around trust and honesty by senior Warrington Labour politicians who have repeatedly promised publication of final accounts for the Council but have failed to deliver, not just once but time and time again. What are they hiding?
“The government has very clearly said many times that local councils should respect the people who fund their council tax, who will ultimately bear the consequences of these risky deals were they to fail, by being transparent in their commercial affairs.
“I’m again asking the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Robert Jenrick to investigate why Warrington’s accounts haven’t been signed off, we don’t want to see what happened in Croydon or Slough happen in Warrington.”
Meanwhile, former leader of the council and Lib Dem finance spokesperson Cllr Ian Marks has also expressed serious concerns over the delays in responding to freedom of information requests.
Cllr Marks said: “I have lost track of how many times I have asked at meetings of the Council’s Audit and Corporate Governance Committee when the accounts for 2017/18 were going to be signed off by the external auditor.
“We have been given several dates, all of which have been missed, and recently neither the Council nor the Auditor are prepared to commit themselves.
“Three years of accounts need signing off and a fourth year has now ended. All sorts of reasons have been given for the delay. To make matters worse, changes to the rules and enhanced auditing requirements mean some back-tracking has had to take place over parts of the accounts, previously ticked off.
“The accounting is complex and you have to be a fully qualified accountant to fully understand what is going on. The Council has employed expensive consultants to support its case but we have a stand-off. When will it all end?
“The reputation of the Council must be damaged by all this and people will suspect something sinister is going on.
“The investment in Redwood Bank caused the original challenge to the Council. The latest revelation about the Council not dealing with Freedom of Information requests about Redwood properly is a very serious matter.
“This just adds fuel to the fire and the Council must come clean about their treatment of these requests. I referred to the unsatisfactory responses to these requests in my Opposition Budget speech in Spring 2019 but the stalemate continues.”
In response to Mr Carter’s comments a Warrington Borough Council spokesperson said: “While the delays at Grant Thornton in finalising their audit are unfortunate, we continue to be completely commercially transparent, and have made our accounts public when required. Indeed, our draft accounts have been published for 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21 will shortly be published and available for public inspection.
“We would welcome the MPs support in ensuring Grant Thornton complete their work as soon as possible, and bring this matter to a close.”
Meanwhile, Cllr Bowden responded: “The delays in the external auditor finalising the audit are extremely disappointing. It is due to factors completely outside the Council’s control. Despite repeated promises from our auditors over many months, they have still not issued an external audit certificate. In actual fact, they aren’t even working on our accounts currently, as their resources have been diverted to NHS audit.
“There has been a systemic failure of public sector audit due to this Government’s abolition of the Audit Commission and contracting work to large commercial accountancy firms that do not have either the capacity or experience to cope. These failings were recognised in the recent Redmond Review into local authority audit and the Government has failed to implement many of its key recommendations.
“The Council has always published its accounts on time and they are fully transparent to the public on our website. There seems to be a lot of amateur opinions doing the rounds from people that don’t understand public sector accounts.
“The MP would be more usefully engaged in lobbying his Government to implement the recommendations of the Redmond Review that are supported by CIPFA and the wider Local Government sector. This would speed up external audit closure for the large and increasing number of local authority accounts that are still not closed due to fundamental failures in the audit system.”
Serious concerns over council’s delays in responding to Freedom of Information requests
2 Comments
It is not the awful delays in dealing with FOI requests which has resulted in the accounts not being signed off – I believe it is the refusal by WBC to accept that it has over-stated the value of the Redwood investment in its Balance Sheet.
I (sort of) agree with Cllr Bowden that the abolition of the District Auditor role has been a contributory factor in this. Had the DA still been around we could have nipped this nonsense in the bud.
However, it’s a bit rich for Cllr Bowden to blame the absence of a more stringent audit function rather than his own decision-making. To take an analogy: that would be like a burglar blaming the police for letting him get away with it!