Educating a Folkestone & Hythe Tory Cllr

He is one the new kids on the block. Elected in May 2023, with 618 votes, Cllr Alan Martin (Con) (pictured) represents Walland And Denge Marsh Ward and sits on the Audit & Governance Committee. Given his recent outburst on his first committee sitting, it’s clear the training hasn’t educated the Tory Cllr.  

It takes time for anything in our Council to feed through into reports presented to the committee’s and full council. In the main they are always backward looking reports.

One such backward looking report came before the Personnel Committee on the 20 July 2023, was:

Report Number P/23/02 – HR Annual Review 2022/23

Now contained in this report at 3.3 and 3.4 states:

3.3 – The last financial year saw a number extremely complex and high profile disciplinary investigations which saw HR and Internal Audit working closely to support managers appointed to investigate the various allegations. Some of these investigations were very time consuming, with two of the particularly complex cases taking in excess of 6 months to bring to a conclusion.

3.4 – In 3.1 above it was stated that there were 16 disciplinary cases but only 8 outcomes are recorded. It is worth noting that 6 of the remaining 8 cases were linked to the complex investigations mentioned in 3.3 above and resulted in the employee resigning either before the investigation completed or before a formal hearing could be convened.

With  regards to 3.4 we know the six all left the Council before the investigations were completed and we know that were related to procurement and contract management such as  the Premier Roofing Contract for example. Once the officers left the Council, the investigations ended and there was no outcome on the findings; which could be presented to them.

However, we know that some of the officers who left before the investigations were completed, purchased property either here in the UK or abroad. How do we know this, well because there are companies who undertake asset tracing. One such company is called Grey List Trace.

Assets can be many different things, for example, money, paintings, property/land etc, and tracking their movements can be very difficult indeed. However that said, The Shepway Vox Team have over the last few years designed and developed its own asset tracing software. And in doing so we have discovered that some of the people who left the Council, as mentioned in the HR report above, went onto purchase property outright in Thailand (£875k), the Bahamas (£900k), France (£750k) and the UK (£650k), within months of their departure.

Now you may or may not find that surprising. But lets not forget in 2017, Procurement Fraud in Local Government was estimated to have cost the taxpayer £4.4bn. In 2022, it was reported Fraud is now the most common crime in England and Wales, costing the UK economy £137bn each year.  Local government is not immune to fraud by those on the inside or the outside. All too often we get to hear about the blue badge fraudster, or the benefit cheat, but rarely do we hear about about the local government officer who took a council for a financial ride.

When an officer leaves a Council many receive something called a settlement agreement. These used to be called non-disclosure agreements.  These are part of the problem as an officer who may have committed fraud, or been a sex pest, can leave a Council and move to another, and nobody is any the wiser of what they did at their previous council due to the settlement agreement. This is a great network for fraudsters, sex pests etc, to move around in.

Now for anyone to be able to perpetrate a fraud inside any Council must mean there are poor internal controls. Under s3 of The Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 it states:

A relevant authority must ensure that it has a sound system of internal control which—

(a) facilitates the effective exercise of its functions and the achievement of its aims and objectives;

(b) ensures that the financial and operational management of the authority is effective; and

(c) includes effective arrangements for the management of risk.

Now this all falls under the Audit & Governance Committee remit, who like the Personnel Committee met on the 20 July 2023. At this meeting Cllr Alan Martin (Con), yes he who we mentioned in the opening paragraph, asked the following

The response to Cllr Alan Martin (Con) wasn’t very good and so to make it clear to him and the rest of the Cllrs on the A&G Committee, objections are a statutory right, like FoI or consumer protection rights.

Objection rights to any councils accounts are set out in the Local Audit & Accountability Act 2014 at s25 – s28 of the Act.

Objectors raise issues like the Premier Roofing Contract; which was for £484,056, yet the council spent £2,639,100; which was 445% more than the budget. The P & R Gas contract; which led to the collapse of East Kent Housing and it being brought back in house. Or the fact  £1,452,646 was spent in 2021/22, on suppliers without a Contract Standing Orders compliant contract, of which £650,000 was spent using expired contracts.  And lets not forget the budget for Princes Parade was exceeded well before anyone was informed, as former Cllr Lesley Whybrow mentioned at the Overview & Scrutiny Committee on the 23 Feb 2023.

All these issues, and more, are issues of poor internal controls; which is the remit of the Committee, the internal and external auditor. Poor internal controls at our Council allowed more than £9.4m to be paid out, in excess of the original contract sums in 2021/22 alone. Without objectors, much of this would never have been known.

The issues of governance (poor internal controls) is much wider than just finance, poor management has lasting long-term repercussions. It undermines faith in local democracy and hits the Council Taxpayer in the purse and wallet. Perhaps this mismanagement and those before it, go a way to explaining why we have the highest council tax in Kent. 

Officers left prior to the investigations being completed, as the HR report above makes clear. So we’ll never know precisely if there was fraud. But given the fact some of the officers who did leave, acquired property shortly after leaving, certainly raises the plausible suspicion of fraud along with a good number of other red flags. We believe this warrants further investigation. But of course, we suspect, like you, that won’t happen. 

Like any organization, the Council has three systems, the prescribed, the alleged and the actual.

The prescribed are the systems laid down in the constitution etc. The alleged is the one management is keen to inform Cllrs the way it is done. And the actual is the one officers are applying in practice on the ground. The final one is not the one which usually appears in reports provided to Cllrs. There is but one exception those reports provided by the internal auditor, as it there job to find the actual system and investigate it.. 

As such, Cllr Alan Martin (Con), you and your colleagues need to become more skeptical about what you see and read as a Cllr, as you cannot be 100% certain what system the Council are offering in any report; which comes before you. So, the most important skill for you and your colleagues why sitting on the Audit & Governance Committee, or any other committee, is to have an instinct for misinformation being fed to you by the officers in all reports, plus a deep seated suspicion of the way in which the Council operates. Always assume the worst and you will almost always be right.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime