Kent County Council Paid Out £10.7 Million in Secret Exit Deals — But Only Reported £3.65 Million

In an era defined by rising council tax, stretched services, and mounting pressure on frontline care, Kent County Council (KCC) has managed to lose sight of something rather basic: adding up the numbers and telling residents the truth. Between 2021/22 and 2024/25, more than £7 million in real exit payments — redundancy packages, pension top-ups, and discretionary settlements — were issued by the council but not included in its own published financial accounts.

This wasn’t an accounting technicality. These were actual cheques, drawn from the public purse. KCC, meanwhile, filed statutory accounts showing just a fraction of the real expenditure. But behind closed doors, the same council reported the full figures to central government. The result is a gaping trust deficit. The council knew what it had spent. It just didn’t tell us.

What Kent Disclosed Publicly in Its Official Accounts

KCC must, like all other local authories publish its Draft Statement of Accounts 2024/25. At Note 6 of these accounts – page 41 – within those accounts specifically addresses exit packages: compulsory redundancies, voluntary exits, and any discretionary payments — all broken down by cost band. This is not optional. It is part of local government accounting under the CIPFA Code and the NAO Code of Audit Practice 2024.

Over four years, here’s what Kent County Council claimed publicly:

• £3.65 million across 308 departures:

These figures are meant to reflect every relevant exit, with associated financial implications. They’re audited, signed off by the council’s statutory finance officer (Section 151 Officer), and presented to elected members and residents.

What Kent Told Central Government

At the same time, Kent submitted annual data to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) — previously MHCLG — as part of its required transparency returns. These include the same exit packages, but with more granular details: exact costs, pension strain, and ex gratia (non‑contractual) elements.

The discrepancy is striking. While £10.70 million was reported to Whitehall, only £3.64 million ever reached public view via Kent’s own accounts. That’s a difference of £7.05 million — nearly double that which was disclosed.

The Annual Gap: A Forensic Breakdown

Putting the two data sets side‑by‑side lays bare just how much severance spending slipped through the public‑reporting net.

Over the four‑year period 202 exit packages—nearly two‑thirds of the total—never appeared in the council’s published accounts. In cash terms that means residents were kept in the dark about £7.05 million, or roughly £2 out of every £3 actually spent on departures.

Who Signed Off These Numbers?

Statutory responsibility lies with the Section 151 Officer, the finance chief legally required to ensure accurate, complete financial reporting. For most of this period, that officer was Zena Cooke (pictured), who went on unexpected leave in 2023. The reasons were never formally disclosed. Lets not forget in our Shepway Vox Team article we stated:

“We believe that within the next two financial years – so by 2022/23 at latest, they’ll be threatening to issue a s114 notice which means effective bankruptcy.”

And it came true.

Following Cooke’s departure, interim control was handed to John Betts – pictured, a long‑standing figure in local authority finance. But in 2024/25, under Betts, the gap widened: just 44 % of the exit spending was disclosed publicly, while the rest was submitted only to DLUHC.

It’s important to stress: there is no confirmed evidence of any wrongdoing by either S151 officer. However, persistent — if unverified — reports from figures within Kent’s former Tory administration have suggested that Cooke may have received a payout exceeding £1 million. This remains entirely unsubstantiated, and no such figure appears in the published Statements of Accounts or remuneration disclosures.

Nonetheless, the scale of under‑reporting across the broader exit‑package disclosures raises important questions. It is also conceivable that Cooke could have received more than £1 million in an exit package in 2023/24 or 2024/25, given the under‑reporting.

The Shepway Vox Team were right to ask whether Kent’s finances were safe in Ms Cooke’s hands — and based on the evidence now available, it appears they had good reason to do so.

Where Were the Auditors — And Who Was Watching the Watchmen?

All the key data — every payment, every departure, every cost — was properly recorded within Kent’s internal systems and submitted annually to central government through DLUHC returns. Despite this, the council’s own published financial statements disclosed only a fraction of the total exit payments made — just £3.64 million out of a known £10.70 million.

This raises one central and unavoidable question: Where were the auditors — both internal and external — and why didn’t anyone raise the alarm?

Internal Audit exists to independently assess financial controls, ensure compliance with legal duties, and provide assurance that the numbers presented to the public are accurate and complete. That’s not a discretionary function — it’s fundamental to good governance. Yet over four consecutive years, more than 200 exits and £7.05 million in spending went unreported in the formal accounts, and Internal Audit appears to have remained silent.

There is no evidence in any published audit reports, committee minutes, or review documents to suggest that Internal Audit ever flagged the widening gap. No warning. No reconciliation check. No alert to councillors or the public.

Equally troubling is the role of external auditors – Grant Thornton. Tasked with ensuring that the accounts present a “true and fair view” of a council’s financial position, external auditors are required — under ISA (UK) 240 and 500 — to exercise professional scepticism, obtain appropriate evidence, and investigate the risk of material misstatement due to error or fraud.

Exit packages, particularly those involving pensions and discretionary payments, are high‑risk areas with direct implications for a council’s liabilities and reserves. It would be expected that any thorough audit would review the figures disclosed in the accounts against those submitted to central government.

Did this comparison happen? If so, why weren’t the discrepancies challenged? If not, why not?

What this failure suggests is not just oversight, but systemic weakness in internal controls. In other words inadequate segregation of duties, poor recordkeeping, insufficient access controls, or ineffective reconciliation processes. Officers responsible for reconciling external disclosures with internal accounts either failed to perform the checks, failed to communicate them, or failed to act on the differences.

This points to a deeper failure of governance: not simply a breakdown in one process, but a collapse of scrutiny across the board — from finance officers to internal auditors to external review. Checks and balances didn’t just malfunction. They were absent.

A full, independent review is now essential. It must examine:

• Whether internal audit was aware of the mismatch, and if not, why not;
• Whether external audit procedures were adequate and in line with standards;
• Whether senior finance officers provided complete and accurate data; and
• Why such a wide discrepancy persisted without intervention or correction.

The public rightly expects more. This isn’t just about £7 million. It’s about a council’s duty to report honestly, and the mechanisms meant to protect that duty.

If the very systems designed to guard public money can miss something this large — what else might they be missing?

The Wider Consequence: National Trust at Risk

The UK’s 2022/23 Whole of Government Accounts were published without English local government figures — the first time this has occurred in modern fiscal history.

However, English local government statutory audits are increasingly delayed… the fall in data quality and completeness of returns has degraded the reliability of trend data and the insight the accounts can provide.

While KCC is not individually named, the scale and nature of the discrepancies it exhibits mirrors the broader systemic issues. The cumulative effect is serious: Whitehall can no longer reliably consolidate public spending across the country.

Final Verdict: We Deserve the Full Picture

This is not just about an oversight in reporting or a line in a spreadsheet. It’s about democratic accountability, institutional transparency, and the fundamental duty of honesty in public office. When an organisation as large and powerful as Kent County Council knowingly reports one set of figures to central government, and another to its taxpayers, that is not a mistake — it is a breach of public trust.

The public has the right to expect that what they read in a council’s accounts is the truth — full, clear, and without omission. What happened here over four financial years is not a simple administrative gap. It is a pattern: a pattern of failing to disclose, failing to reconcile, and failing to explain. It is a sign that the internal checks and balances meant to protect public money — from internal audit, to external auditors, to elected councillors themselves — either weren’t applied or simply weren’t effective.

And all of it happened in plain sight.

More than 200 staff exited the organisation. Over £10.70 million was paid out in real money. But only £3.64 million was declared publicly. That’s nearly £2 in every £3 unaccounted for in the eyes of the public.

And when public confidence in governance is eroding — when councils up and down the country are declaring financial distress, cutting care services, hiking taxes and introducing emergency budgets — credibility matters more than ever.

This scandal, because that is what it is, raises burning questions:

• How could this scale of discrepancy be missed year after year?
• Why did no one inside KCC blow the whistle earlier?
• What was the external auditor told, and when?

KCC now owes the public a full accounting — not just of the missing millions, but of the systems that allowed them to go missing in the first place.

This was public money. It was spent. It was known. And it was hidden.

NB we previously published an article similar to this. We realised there was an error and removed it. We have updated the data; and republished with what is the correct data according to all publicly available information. 

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism for the People NOT the Powerful