This week the erstwhile reporter Sean Seddon began to run out the story on Chronicle live regarding the absolute mess the audit function is in at Northumberland County Council and how it isn’t independent from Tory politics.
His story explained how the Council and its audit committee missed the utter turmoil which surrounds the planning of audit and how the well merged twosome of Cllrs Oliver and Hill ran out poisonous personal bullying attacks on their enemies whilst missing the blatantly obvious simple task of auditing the processes of the Council.
Each year Councils have to agree a plan with their external auditor to correct any weaknesses found from the previous years audit, in order to correct any imbalances that may occur in the use of public funds. During early 2019 the massive audit company Ernst Young issued a plan that outlined the changes required to correct the anomalies found during 2018. Auditors use a traffic light system to show the problem areas and Advance Northumberland featured heavily as a ‘RED RISK’. http://committeedocs.northumberland.gov.uk/MeetingDocs/41093_M9232.pdf
The link above shows the plan agreed by Cllr Georgina Hill, the Audit Chairperson and Cllr Nick Oliver who holds the finance portfolio.
But following the agreed plan was a difficult matter for the two in charge as serious political interference wasn’t quelled by either of them and they continued to roll out unexamined and secretive reports into the public domain using the Audit Committee to legitimise bullying and press sensationalism.
It got so bad that Ernst Young left the clutches of the Council following a damning report on ‘lack of independence and having no trust in the accounts produced by Oliver and presented by Hills to her team.
These actions are unprecedented in Local Government. The Council has the Local Government Associations top ‘Peer Group Leader’ for the North of England within its ranks, Councillor Glenn Sanderson ,yet he didn’t bother to call time on the nonsense happening under his very nose and did not call the LGA in to help resolve the issues and locate the truth behind the veil of secrecy that has been cast over Northumberland County Council since May 2017.
In a letter to the council from Ernst Young they explained that the Audit Committee and Internal Audit were not working independently from the administration and that hey felt changes had to be made. After looking into Advance Northumberland’s audit and accounts they left the Councils clutches.
The well known auditor Mazars have taken over and have begun the task of viewing the past and making recommendations on the future when suddenly the CEO of the organisation Mrs Daljit Lally blows her cover and threatens to report the nefarious goings on at Morpeth County Hall to the Police and the Eternal Auditor.
As simple local residents we don’t know what Mazars will make of this but the Labour Party, Ian Lavery a local MP and some of the Independent Councillors have come out to seek information regarding whats going on including who was sleeping with who at the ratepayers expense, how much has Advance Northumberland lost over the last three years and the truth behind whether the CEO actually spoke with the Chief Executive of Advance let alone instruct him to change his ways as their starters for 10.
In the meantime we the public would like to see Cllrs Georgina Hill and Nick Oliver inspect through her audit committee where the £880M borrowed has been spent. Whether any Councillors owe Council tax or NNDR cash to the Council and some of the simpler things in the Council such as how many top officers have been paid off and how much has been spent supplying dozens of senior staff with gagging clauses. Of course Northumbria Police may scoop up Hill and Oliver in their investigations. At this moment in time the e-media pilots believe Cllr Oliver owes more than the value of 600 bottles of wine at French Euro exchange rates to the Council in unpaid personal debt from his latest failed company and yet he has the choice to write that debt off next year from the position he holds as portfolio holder for Finance.
What a lot!
ReplyDeleteCounty Hall infighting has reached a peak where the people are being left behind they are more interested in their own positions and cliques than the people who put them there ]