Incompetent!

 Harlow Council

Conservative Group

Council leaders faced prolonged attack on their financial competence at last Thursday’s Policy and Resources committee when they revealed a £1.7M overspend and raid on reserves.  Councillors from all sides questioned how such a huge hole in the accounts was only spotted three quarters of the way through the year.

Councillor Simon Carter led the attack for the Conservatives by suggesting that the Labour-led administration must have been looking for a good week to bury bad news, let alone a good day.  “Tuesday saw the stormy meeting over the swimming pool closure, Wednesday the inquest into the overspend at the Playhouse and now these revelations over the Council’s finances.”  He also asked whether the bad news had been kept hidden until after the release of the CPA assessment.

The previous Council Leader, Councillor Brooks, raised a series of critical questions over monitoring of the budget by officers and councillors, suggesting that his ‘golden financial legacy’ had been wasted.  He also suggested that there was major discontent amongst the Labour group about the situation and leadership of Councillor Durcan. Although Councillor Brooks originally intended to substitute for Councillor Folan, The Labour Leader was soon on the ‘phone to demand Councillor Folan’s attendance, which prevented Councillor Brook’s voting.

The ploy worked, for, although Councillor Folan said nothing during the debate, he duly voted with his leader.

Joint Council Leader Chris Millington (LibDem) declared that he “was not happy” and let the cat out of the bag about next years’ council tax by referring to “a lot of cuts next year” commenting that he and Councillor Durcan were, “Parting ways on this”.

Conservative Group Leader Councillor Andrew Johnson laid in with questions about how realistic some of the “savings” were.  £205,000 was to be saved from ‘unfilled vacancies’ even though the target on this for this year had not been achieved, along with another £200,000 of ‘unidentified savings’ to be achieved within three months.  He asked the leaders whether these could be achieved without cutting front line services.  Another element of the savings was a raid on the Insurance Fund of £400,000, but even that figure was suspect, as it was still awaiting verification by the insurance advisers.

Despite the range of cuts proposed, at least £1.1M would need to be taken from reserves to balance the books, leaving the Council perilously close to breaching the minimum figure required by the Audit Commission.

Councillor Carter concluded, “The financial incompetence revealed tonight has undone all the hard work of the past three years in improving the council’s CPA grade.” He told the leaders they needed to, “Get a grip”.

ENDS