Missing

How do you lose a £142 million pounds? Down the back of the sofa? At the bookies, a bad investment? We don’t know, but what we do know is that it is missing, gone awol.

Kent County Council (KCC) Payment to Supplier Data is all online and can be seen here. It is for payments over £250 and goes back to 2013. We thought we’d have a look at it and start putting the data into some kind of order that can be easily visualised by you the reader. In doing so this is what the data showed us and we want to share this with you.

So you can see that in May 2014, the financial data takes a lemming like dive and shows KCC spent only £16 million. Their average monthly spend is £158.73 million. Meaning that £142 million vanished. We don’t know where as our emails to KCC have never been answered. We sent emails to KCC in June, July, August, Sept and Oct, but response there has been none.

We thought that we might have made a mistake, so had a look a the Spend Network Data. It is independent of our analysis and demonstrates quite clearly that the same month is missing and that KCC spent only £16 million. So no mistake by us in our understanding of the data.

So for 30 months, £142 million has been languishing somewhere, but no-one seems to know where the money is, or how it came to be lost, as no-one at KCC is responding to our emails.

Paul Carter CBE is Leader of KCC and his email address is paul.carter-LEADER@kent.gov.uk. So if you want to ask him where the £142 million has gone, you know what to do. He might get his staff looking down the back of every sofa KCC own, just in case it might by chance be down one of them.

According to KCC Expenses & Allowance Data, Cllr Carter had claimed £103, 886 and received renumeration of £27,457 (subject to paye) for April -Sept 2016

Or you can email the Corporate Director for Finance and Procurement (s151) Andy Wood at Andy.wood@kent.gov.uk

Andy’s salary is £138,088. Andy’s expenses for the past financial year (April 2015 to March 2016) are £66.50.

Andy is a qualified Accountant and should really know where the £142 million has gone, shouldn’t he?

Or you can contact your local Kent County Councillor and ask them if they might ask a question in the chamber about the £142 million, as members of the public cannot ask questions in KCC’s chamber. We wonder why not…

You can find all KCC Cllrs details here.

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