Could do better

Bolsover's auditors have just published their annual governance report, and for the third year in a row it puts Bolsover at the back of the class. It has no fewer than 17 recommendations, 13 adjudged to be of high importance and concludes that the Council has important weaknesses in internal control.

Here’s a few exceprts

• Fundamental errors in the total comprehensive income and expenditure; the movement in reserves statement and the cash flow statement.
• Ongoing capacity issues that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency
• 14 material errors and numerous non-material non-trivial errors theses issues could have and should have been identified by our own review processes
• Significant scope to develop your arrangements for securing financial resilience
• Critical that the Council takes action to move to a single fit for purpose asset register
• Significant governance weakness in contract arrangements
• A number of agreed recommendations that have not been implemented from previous audit letters and reports

Does it matter? - well when you can’t account for the assets you've got it's hard to inspire public confidence in the purchase of Clowne Campus. Other issues raised by the auditors include a £176K under provision of Council tax debts, £157K under provision for Housing Benefit overpayments, £98K of six year old debts that need to be written-off, a £256K provision for an equal pay claim and a £25K bill for all the extra work that they have had to do on Bolsover’s behalf.

Probably most damning of all is the observation that although the Council needs to make savings of £6.5M over the three year period 2011/12 to 2013/14 yet by Sept 2011 it would appear that all Council members had not received a comprehensive overview of the progress in delivering the agreed level of savings. That comment is wrong of course, it should now say November instead of September.

None of this is new, the red lights have been flashing for years. Last January when responding to the previous auditors letter, the Leader, Cllr Watts, said that he wouldn't accept another critical report pointing out that in times of austerity if your financial data is wrong you can make serious decisions to sack staff, or close services, when it is not required. Looks like he was wrong on the first point but right on the second.

Increasing the number of accountants is a necessary but not a sufficient response. The problem runs a bit deeper than that. Some acceptance of responsibility from the Councillors of the Cabinet and Audit Committee would start the process of change but a complete review of the political and leadership culture that has given rise to this systemic failure is long overdue.