Advance Northumberland now in witch-hunters' sites?
After six years of pirating and wasting mammoth amounts of public cash to investigate several people openly accused of fraud by top Tories who were leading members in the disgraced Peter Jackson’s Tory administration.
They allegedly included huge spends on engaging the nations top local government solicitor team, two police forces, two international auditors, a nationally renowned lawyer, private investigators and the whole audit partnership with North Tyneside Council.
That whole swarm was hired in and involved in the costly probe into the Councils arms length regeneration company ARCH to protect the now known to be false statements made in the Northumberland Tory manifesto document.
The complete innocence of everyone involved with the ARCH project, started by its current Chairperson Councillor Jeff Reid, then the witch hunts run through the Councils audit committee eventually exposed and put into the public domain caused so much turmoil within the Council exposing disagreements among colleagues along with the Conservatives internal battlefront at County Hall, a battlefront not only against other Councillors but against their very own chosen by Councillor Jackson Chief Executive Mrs Daljit Lally, an employed officer who was and has been maligned by the Council so badly even top Tories left their posts in the Cabinet and committee places in order to remain at arms length from the malignant culture wars that are still ongoing.
The public high profile sacking of the ARCH treasurer who was ‘to be burned at the stake’ by the Conservatives because of his success in keeping the company well and truly on the right financial and lawful track made the Peter Jackson administration look absolutely foolish, they even took no notice of court reports exposing that the Council had internal auditors camped in the ARCH offices daily from its inception in 2009 until 2017. Those auditors reported directly to the Council’s single professional shareholder, its Chief Executive officer Mr Stewart, Mr Mason then Mrs Daljit Lally. To harken the mess the Northumberland Conservatives got themselves into please see the reports and tribunal judgement links sitting below this article.
Even after the embarrassment of losing an industrial tribunal, Labour Councillors who we now know were wrongly accused having been reported to Northumbria Police were not relieved of their burden of guilt by the Conservative administration who kept the investigation of them in the public eye for three years, dragging them down and ruining their health and their personal lives. As the months rolled on with all sorts of accusations spewed out against them with uncompromised regularity and with no news of their innocence being released the auditor EY spoke with the Audit Committee and released their findings. the internationally renowned auditor EY made the claim that ‘there was no criminality to be found in the Councils arms length company ARCH’. Their company then broke all links with Northumberland County Council
Its believed by many that the former Labour Leadership of the County Council were subjected to a myriad of interviews and investigations by all sorts of highly paid agencies engaged and allegedly in secret when Conservative Councillors who sat on the audit committee heard false claims from their own team members unchallenged by their chairperson Councillor Georgina Hill much to the embarrassment of its in-house audit partnership whose members feared for their future.
Following EY’s statement members of the ‘secret cabinet’ immediately leaked news that another Police Force was to be engaged to confirm their view that criminal Labour Party members had committed fraud. Those Councillors whose only crime was to sit on the board of an arms length company became subjected to another three years where they could not boast of their innocence even within their own family groups.
Two months ago the Council's latest external auditor Mazaars, announced that they had also found ‘No Criminality in ARCH’ but the witch hunt hasn’t ended for the falsely accused as our enquiries found that neither the Council legal team or the external auditor has written to those whose personal lives and reputation has been wrecked by this malice and told them they are innocent, as any reasonable organisation would!
But we do note: that the story rumbles on as those embedded in this injustice now have ADVANCE Northumberland lined up for the same treatment with Councillor Richard Wearmouth laying the blame of false accusation squarely at Councillor Georgina Hill’s feet with his statement to the press that “Meetings chaired by Cllr Hill were regularly held in secret with information from reports selectively leaked online. This behaviour is simply weird” Councillor Hill was the chairperson of the audit committee chosen by Councillor Jackson.
NOTES
https://www.northumberlandconservatives.org.uk/sites/www.northumberlandconservatives.org.uk/files/2017-03/Northumberland%20Manifesto.pdf
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/agreement-reached-in-tribunal-of-ex-arch-finance-director-398657
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5cc806eced915d5dcc3d78f4/Mr__P_S_Czerepok__v_Arch_Corporate_Holdings_Limited_2501581-18_Judgment.pdf
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/people/councillor-calls-for-abolition-of-advance-northumberland-after-report-revelations-3733273
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/advance-northumberland-county-council-loan-28629403#ICID=Android_ChronicleNewsApp_AppShare