Ernie Clark. Hilperton Division, Wiltshire Council.

Auditor made redundant.

News that Wiltshire Council's Internal Auditor has been made redundant prompted members of the Audit Committee to express concerns at the possible loss of financial accountability within the authority.

The job of Internal Audit (IA) is to scrutinise the council's accounts and to review the financial basis of services including adult social care, council tax collection, benefit payments, handling of cash, etc. It also reports to the Audit Committee which comprises elected councillors.

At the last meeting of the committee, the Head of Internal Audit drew attention to the risk that staff cuts might jeopardise the effective delivery of IA. For this weeks meeting a paper was produced which recorded a significant reduction in the hours available for IA enquiries, and referred to other staff changes, but without giving any detail.

The meeting was then told that three senior auditors were to be disposed of and replaced by one junior officer. The committee's Conservative chairman, Roy While, was criticised by other members for allowing this cut to be announced on the day and not notified in advance.

A proposal to censure the chairman for the way the matter has been handled resulted in a tied vote and the chairman then used his casting vote to defeat it!

A member of the committee said later 'I think the performance of Internal Audit has until now been a thorn in the side of the administration and there are many who are glad to look for a different way forward. It seems quite likely that the decision to remove the current post holder will be seen more widely as a penalty for someone who has spoken out too openly in the past. Whether or not that's correct, we are confronted with the extraordinary situation that the administration has made redundant three of its most senior Internal Audit officers without any formal reference to the Audit Committee and with no adequate explanation of the reasoning behind it. This is at best an inappropriate and arrogant decision which jeopardises the interests of council taxpayers'.

I don't serve on this committee, but agree whole heartedly with those comments. It would seem that the Conservatives want a group of officers that won't question anything they think might be amiss but walk in fear of redundancy - which is exactly what the anonymous whistle-blower claimed in their e-mail a while ago!! (See my web post on 17th March).

Perhaps there was more to their claims than the Leader of the Council wanted to admit to?