It’s Magic: £107,000 of Council Procurement Card Data Vanishes

WTF!

Folkestone & Hythe District Council have taken down the Procurement Card Data they published on the 8 Nov, 22. Today the 11 Nov, 22, the dangerous data they published three days earlier has disappeared from the website.

It is self evident the data for 2019/20, has gone. All eight hundred and seventy eight lines of it. And all £107,000 pounds of it. Vanished. No explanation.

As we said on the 8 Nov, in our blog, and re-iterate again:

What’s clear is the 2019/20 Procurement Card data, as published by Folkestone & Hythe District Council, has been manually manipulated; which makes us naturally suspicious of the data… This is of great concern as data manipulation of records to disguise the details of a true transaction date shows signs of poor internal controls… We should all be suspicious of their motives for representing their world, via their dangerous data.

It’s clear when the Council re-publish the 2019/20, procurement card data,  it will have been manipulated again, as it is necessary to give a transaction description, eg windscreen, Subscription Fee and Flights…

When one looks at all three years of Council procurement card data, £9,029 was spent with Amazon, by officers with access to the procurement cards – (read credit card). There were 146 payments made to Amazon in total. Eighty of them had no transaction description for what was purchased, eg Windscreen, Subscription Fee, and Flights, and on… That means 53% of payments made, we have no idea what was purchased.

Put another way, £4,817 was spent with Amazon, by staff responsible for procurement cards, across nine departments, and we do not know what they purchased with the card.

These nine departments are:

Governance Law & Reg Services – 40 unknown purchases.

Finance Customer & Support – 16 unknown purchases.

Electoral Services – 9 unknown purchases.

Estates & Operations – 4 unknown purchases.

Strategic Development – 4 unknown purchases

Cust Case Reg & Communities – 3 unknown purchases.

Transition & Transformation – 2 unknown purchases

Housing – 1 unknown purchase

Human Resources – 1 unknown purchase

What strange is the two departments run by statutory officers of the Council Amandeep Khroud – Governance Law & Reg Services and Charlotte Spendley –  Finance Customer Support take first & second place. We are not surprised.

We note yet again, the Council’s draft statement of accounts 2021/22, have not been published by the first deadline of the 1 Aug,2022. They have until the 30 November to show an audited set of accounts, to you the residents. It is more likely than not this deadline will be missed. The next Audit & Governance Committee meeting is not until the 7 Dec 2022.

It’s clear there are substantial  issues with the Council’s data, whether it be published, unpublished, republished, or waiting to be published.

The Shepway Vox Team, belong to the Mrs Angry School of Local Government so we’ll leave the final words to her:

The most important quality to have is an instinct for misinformation, and a deep seated suspicion of the way in which local authorities operate. Always assume the worst: you will almost always be right.

The Shepway Vox Team

The Velvet Voices of Dissent