17 February (Part 2) - Bexley’s finances. Dishonest? Certainly, but by their standards it isn’t a breach of the law
I do wonder whether if it is worth wasting an evening on attending the Audit
Committee, if anything very interesting is due for discussion they throw the
public out so that their dodgy deals remain secret, however Chairman Councillor
Joe Pollard always does so very nicely. The same happened last night but the
effort of attending was not entirely wasted.
The auditors were there as usual but Sue Exton from Grant Thornton, Bexley’s
principal auditor, has retired and given that one of her last decisions was to
judge some very funny business in Bexley to be lawful she is probably rather
relieved not to have to show her face publicly here again.
The
decision not to refer Bexley Council’s dubious practices to court refers to
the discovery that Bexley had more than one parking contract, one to keep
their Legal Department happy and another to please the contractor through
the
provision of illegal incentives for issuing extra tickets.
Back in 2014 I thought it wise not to reveal how big the incentive was but now that the Auditor
has judged everything to be hunky-dory and no more can be done
about it, it is probably safe to say that it was £4.41 per ticket.
Then there was the application of a whole host of extra and illegal charges by Bexley’s bailiffs.
Huge number of people were systematically defrauded
and it is not as though Bexley Council didn't know about. David Hogan, Bexley’s
Internal Auditor, and to his credit, condemned the practice absolutely, saying
over and over again it was ‘misconduct’.
We are led to believe that the practices have ceased now, four years after it was
brought to Bexley’s attention by the Local Government Ombudsman. No heads rolled
and very little of the money wrongly extorted was returned to the innocent victims.
I should perhaps declare an interest. The objector was me and it will have cost rather a lot
of money in extra auditor's fees to prove what most people already knew. That
Bexley Council is dishonest and the direction must have been set at the very top.
Not much else went on at the Audit meeting in public, I doubt the Tory members know anything about
finance, one of them asked what the auditor's fee was. For 2014/15 it was printed in their report. £159,153.
2013/14 is as yet unknown.
For probing questions one has to rely on the Labour members. Councillor Daniel
Francis (Belvedere) had cleverly linked an item from
last week’s Places Scrutiny meeting
with the official statement on progress made towards achieving the Strategy 2018 budget savings.
The latter said that the money raised by charging for parking in Danson Park and
Hall Place was on course to be achieved in full. Similarly the money raised by charging the
disabled for use of street parking bays was safely in the bag. In fact Deputy
Director Bryce-Smith had said that no new parking revenue had been raised
in Danson Park or Hall Place and Cabinet Member Alex Sawyer said he had no intention of
authorising charges for disabled bays outside residents' houses.
Two bits of the financial progress report are clearly nonsense and Councillor Francis asked how
many more mistakes like that there might be. The Deputy Director of Finance didn't know.
Expertise on Contract and Parking Law kindly provided by
NotoMob.