The Yellow Advertiser quite rightly has a story this week about failings in how district councillors’ expenses claims were processed by council staff:
AN AUDIT of councillors? expenses at Rochford District Council has revealed most are being paid without authorisation.
Richard Bint, who is a senior partner at PKF accountants and business advisers, found 65 out of 70 claim forms on members? expenses he checked had not been appropriately agreed by Rochford District Council.
Other findings included a series of ?significant deficiencies? in financial internal controls, which included the risk that staff were still being paid after they left the council.
In his report, which will go before the council?s Audit Committee tonight (Thursday), Mr Bint said: ?Testing completed on members? expenses found that claim forms had not been appropriately authorised on 65 out of 70 claims. All expense claim forms should be appropriately authorised before being processed on the payroll system.
?We are unable to gain assurance over the accuracy and occurrence of members? expenses and therefore, substantive testing on a sample of claims is required.?
Rochford Council said the matter had been reported to members….
The issue was discussed by councillors at last night’s Audit Committee. And councillors were very unhappy about the deficiencies in checking. You can find the agenda item here:.
1.3 Members’ allowances:
Testing completed on Members expenses found
that claim forms had not been appropriately
authorised for 65/70 claims.
All expense claim forms should be appropriately
authorised before being processed on the payroll
system.Although Members expenses are not material to
the accounts, the significant deficiency may result in a
material misstatement in future years.We are unable to gain assurance over the accuracy
and occurrence of members’ expenses and therefore
substantive testing on a sample of claims is required.
Internal Audit has already completed some work in this
area and we will seek to use this work for our required
assurances.
These expenses claims are for things like car mileage for driving to meetings, and for train fares and meals when on council business. The total amount claimed by all 39 councillors put together is about ?4000 per year. Many councillors don’t claim at all. These expenses claims are totally separate from councillors allowances , which range from a few thousands of pounds per year for a backbench councillor to over ?20,000 for the leader. So the expenses in question aren’t huge.
We have been told that what’s happened was that councillors expenses claims were all being checked , but for a few months no-one was signing to give a final authorisation that payment should be made. The auditors are not suggesting that any false claims were being made.
And incidentally, unlike at the County Council, no district councillor has a council credit card.