Westmorland and Furness Council has been accused of giving sick note excuses over its failures to publish various financial reports and data including the councils first year unaudited accounts legislation that require the 2023/24 draft unaudited accounts to be published by 31 May 2024 followed by a public inspection period which is to include the first 10 working days of June.
The council leadership was questioned over the failure repeated failures to publish its spending on corporate credit cards and missing a key deadline to publish its unaudited accounts for public inspection.
The council leadership faced questions from Jonathan Davies of Putting Cumbria First.
In opening his questioning of the council he said “One of the key statutory requirements of all councils is accountability for the public purse and the transparency of spending of public money.”
“Yet now in its second year Westmorland and Furness Council is still failing on its basic statutory duty over transparency of its spending with the go to stock reason of been a new council.”
“This council has to date still failed to publish its full spend on the multiple council credit cards something it’s been challenged on many times over the last year.”
“Now this council has missed a statutory deadline to publish its unaudited accounts for public inspection with just the sick note apology of ‘The delay has arisen due to the complexities of additional work required in year one of the new unitary authority’.”
“And time frame for addressing the failure to publish the accounts the same that the leader has given on the failure to, publish the council credit card spending of ‘the Council will publish a draft set of accounts as soon as reasonably practicable’.”
Mr Davies asked the leader of Westmorland and Furness Council Cllr Brook to tell the residents and businesses across Westmorland and Furness when they can expect the council to deliver some transparency and account ability over the public purse it holds.
The Leader asked the Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance Cllr Jarvis to respond.
He explained that currently Westmorland and Furness Council and Cumberland Council still have shared service responsible for issuing the transparency data on the 86 corporate credit cards that Westmorland and Furness hold.
Cllr Jarvis said “Westmorland and Furness Council have been requesting that this information is published as soon as possible and will continue to liaise with the shared service on this important transparency issue.”
“Disaggregation of the financial services shared team is planned to happen in the next 12 months and at that point Westmorland and Furness Council will have more control over the timelines of publishing this data.”
In response to the question over the council missing a deadline for publishing the councils accounts for public inspection Cllr Jarvis said “Audit Committee were updated at their meeting in June on the revised timelines for publishing the 2023/24 draft unaudited accounts for Westmorland and Furness Council and Cumbria Pension Fund. They will be published by the 30th September 2024. This was supported by our External Auditors –Grant Thornton.”
“The complexity of the additional work required in year one of a new unitary authority should not be under estimated. It is not a sick note apology it is a factual reality.”
“I would like to suggest that rather than criticising the work of the Council instead, now that the complexities have been explained and hopefully acknowledged, that the staff involved should be congratulated on achieving such progress in the first year of a new Unitary Council.’”
Following previous questioning by Mr Davies on the failure to publish monthly spending of the council another legal requirement the council began to publish backdated monthly spending reports on its website for spending over all £250. The published spending that still excludes the councils credit cards is now shows spending since the 1st April 2023 to May 2024.
The council will now have to publish it’s unaudited accounts for public inspection by the 30th of September 2024, when the council should also publishing its audited accounts for public inspection.
New analysis by the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) shows that almost 100 councils have failed to publish any statement of accounts for the latest financial year. In total, over the four financial years since 2018/19, there are 658 overdue audited statements of accounts, leading to what the TPA has called a ‘transparency crisis’ in local government.
Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "The failure to file accounts is causing a transparency crisis in local government.”
“It’s unacceptable that struggling Brits have to stump up for growing council tax bills when their town hall bosses either won’t or can’t show them what they’re spending their money on.”
“Local government chiefs should treat taxpayers with greater respect and file accounts on time.”