CROYDON IN CRISIS: ‘Is this acceptable?’ Labour leader lists the 9 pieces of detailed financial reporting that were absent from this week’s cabinet papers. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Early alarm: Labour’s Stuart King
The Labour group at Croydon Town Hall has lodged a formal complaint about the reduced level of financial accountability and transparency since Tory Jason Perry took on the job as the borough’s Mayor.
Labour leader Stuart King has written to Dr Olu Olasode, the accountancy consultant who was last year appointed as the independent chair of Croydon Council’s GPAC – the General Purposes and Audit Committee.
Referring to this week’s council cabinet meeting, where part-time Perry failed to bring forward any of the monthly budget reports that have been presented at Town Hall public meetings for the past 18 months, King wrote, “I am concerned that this weakening of financial reporting is a step back, not forward, and will be detrimental to the council’s ability to continue to make improvements in the way it takes, reports and monitors financial decisions.”
It was King who, as the then deputy leader of the Labour group following Croydon’s financial collapse in November 2020, carried much of the responsibility for re-balancing the finances of the cash-strapped council.
Early warning: Dr Olu Olasode has been asked to look into the financial reporting at this week’s cabinet
The installing of Olasode as an independent chair of GPAC was another part of the response to the council’s financial difficulties, intended to provide better, and politically impartial, scrutiny of the way in which the authority’s business is being handled. His appointment was welcomed and endorsed at the time by Perry and Croydon’s Tories.
Olasode was approved by Whitehall for the role, given his four decades of accountancy experience with health, social care, housing and community organisations, including the Care Quality Commission and the Audit Commission.
In the letter to Olasode, which has been seen by Inside Croydon, Councillor King wrote, “Since the start of the 2021-2022 financial year, the cabinet has received monthly reports on the General Fund, Housing Revenue Account and Capital Programme, providing what has been acknowledged as a “step change improvement in relation to the council’s finances”.
“The publication of detailed forecasts on a monthly basis was widely welcomed, including by the government’s improvement panel.
“I am concerned that the paper received at [Wednesday’s] cabinet provided significantly less information on Period 1 than has previously been the case.”
Helpfully, King then provided the GPAC chair with a list of nine pieces of detailed financial information which Perry, the £81,000 per year part-time Mayor, and his cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, have withheld from public view. Each of these pieces of information had been included in every previous monthly report to the council cabinet since early 2021.
But missing from Mayor Perry’s cabinet papers were…
- A detailed table with the General Fund forecast for each Directorate, including variances against budget;
- A detailed table of medium-term financial strategy savings that are at risk, by Directorate;
- A detailed table setting out quantifiable and unquantifiable risks, by Directorate;
- A detailed table of quantifiable and unquantifiable opportunities, by Directorate;
- A detailed Housing Revenue Account position including significant variances in the forecast;
- A detailed HRA Capital Programme report detailing variances against budget;
- A detailed General Fund Capital programme report detailing variances against budget;
- A detailed Service budget forecast;
- A detailed Capital programme forecast.
King wrote, “In the case of the HRA, all that was provided was a 17-word update.
Budget-buster: Mayor Jason Perry
“In the case of the capital programme, no update of any type was provided.”
Sources at Katharine Street say that the new Mayor is trying to hide the seriousness of the council’s financial plight, suggesting that there has already been a £20million council overspend in the two months since part-time Perry took charge of the Town Hall – turning a £2million underspend into £18million-worth of unbudgeted spending.
Just 65 days into Perry’s Mayoralty, King has effectively called for the independent chair of GPAC to step in over the Tory administration’s financial management.
“Could I ask you to consider whether… this is acceptable?” King has asked Olasode.
“I hope you will agree with me that the council needs to return to providing financial information to the same degree of detail and level of frequency as was established in 2021-2022.”
Read more: Tory Mayor wants to keep finances under wraps for 9 months
Read more: Part-time Mayor Perry is only ‘listening’ four hours a day
Read more: Officials to investigate possible wrong-doing at council
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