Return to HomepageMr Peter Stethridge
Chief Executive Officer
Cornwall County Council
County Hall
TRURO
TR15 3AY
9th October 2003
Dear Mr Stethridge
On 11 July 2003, I wrote to you outlining my initial reaction to some of your remarks made in your letter of 15 May 2003. You will recall that I expressed my incredulity that there were some ten major issues, which you apparently regarded as being of insufficient importance as to require an explanation.
I am now able to make the fuller response, which I promised at that time. Before I do so, however, I must point out that, having known you for a number of years, it is a matter of deep regret that I have been driven to the point where I am obliged to write to you in this vein. Sadly, after 18 months of extensive correspondence, a number of meetings and departmental and Internal Audit investigations, I am no nearer to obtaining satisfactory answers to a number of very serious questions. In such circumstances, I feel that I have been reasonably patient in the face of considerable provocation. It is not just that such a situation is discourteous to me personally but it is actually an affront to the five thousand people or so of Redruth South, whose elected representative I am and, on whose behalf, I have interceded to pose questions of direct relevance to many of them. Consequently, I hope you will understand if my comments are especially blunt.
FIRSTLY, the statement that my letter merely outlined my VIEW about the failure to adequately inspect and carry out the procedure for estate road adoption seriously misrepresents both the nature and the extent of my criticism.
I believe that a re-reading of my recent letter, and the considerable correspondence which preceded it, will show that the incredibly lax approach to estate road adoption was only a small part of my concerns. Perhaps, I should point out that my letter did not outline my views, as you suggest, but contained a number of precise statements. Views, as you will know, are merely subjective expressions but my comprehensive criticism, which was not the product of a subjective opinion or a blinkered perception, was a verifiable part of an objective reality, which I had observed on a number of sites and which, most significantly, was abundantly, and independently, confirmed by entry after entry in the Internal Audit report.
SECONDLY, the fact that you have neglected to address any of the issues, which I would have thought would have been of real concern to the Chief Executive of the County Council, but instead chose to comment, on the minor and even trivial point of the failure to acknowledge my effort in highlighting the council's failures, is most telling.
While it is true that verbally you did acknowledge the value of my work, you did not appear to be so appreciative that you committed your appreciation to paper. Nor apparently has your appreciation extended to insisting that all of the serious issues I have raised and the queries I have posed are addressed.
In truth, it is obvious that the contents of my report, embracing one volume of text, which featured 55 pages of reasoned and very critical material, and five volumes of appendices, which included a massive amount of corroborative evidence in the form of correspondence, e-mails, and reports, have been very largely ignored by your officers. When whole swathes of significant criticism of matters, which have serious implications for the people I represent, can be disregarded without explanation and, when an immense amount of time and effort has been wasted, one cannot but conclude that something is very seriously wrong. It would not appear that County Hall, though bedecked with its accolade of excellence, is an environment where commitment and dedication to the interests of the people finds stimulus.
Not only is there a noticeable absence of any reference to three of the four very serious failings of the County Council, none of which appear to concern you, but there have been other significant omissions. It is a matter of some surprise that you are evidently unperturbed both by the evasion and obfuscation, which I have continually experienced and of which you have been made aware on more than one occasion, and by the failure to disclose exactly who has authorised the long standing disregard of the council's statutory duty, its policies and the procedures designed to ensure that its responsibilities are met. This is hardly conducive to good member–officer relationships.
It is just inconceivable that the authority of senior management could have disintegrated to such an extent that officers independently throughout the county would have been able, on the scale which is evident in the Internal Audit report, to contravene council policies and procedures at will. The railroading of the Internal Audit report through the Community Life Scrutiny Committee, about which I had occasion to e-mail the Monitoring Officer only a few days before its meeting on 24 January and which, if I remember correctly, was copied to you, similarly does not seem to cause you concern.
One might reasonably have expected a Chief Executive Officer, who had just taken up post, to have reacted promptly and, like the proverbial new broom, undertaken decisive action to address the very serious problems.
THIRDLY, I'm afraid that I simply do not recognise the impression of the dynamic action, which your letter seeks to convey.
Between 14 March 2002, when I first wrote to the Director of Transportation and Estates, and 12 September 2002, you, together with the Leader of the Council and the Portfolio Holder, have been kept informed of developments by copies of five detailed letters, which I have written to Mr Fish. You therefore MUST have been aware of the irregularities taking place as was the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer, who was also sent copies of the last three letters, when it became all too apparent that something was seriously wrong. Since the irregularities included the failure of the council to follow its own policies and to carry out a lawful duty, which were symptomatic of MALADMINISTRATION, it is hardly an exaggeration to claim that they were of a rather serious nature.
If you were not aware of the contravention of council policies, including at least one of its statutory duties before these letters, you certainly were then. Yet there was no response to my letters, either to myself or to the Council acquainting them of what was going on.
Your only response came after you had become aware of my contact with the Head of Audit Services, which you did when the Solicitor/Monitoring Officer impounded my letter to the Community Life Scrutiny Committee on the Friday before its meeting on 9 October 2002.(CLICK here) In this letter, there was a stinging attack on the way in which highways matters were being conducted without reference to the requirements of the council's policy or to the requirements of the Highway Act 1980 and the way in which the democratic integrity of this council was being undermined. It would appear that your response was to HIGHJACK the Internal Audit investigation, and to seemingly direct it along a more innocuous path than what the Head of Audit Services had agreed to follow in conversations with me only just over a week earlier.
The ONLY action which had been evident to me, has been an apparent attempt to evade and conceal the litany of failure. which has clearly been going on for years, even in the period when you were the Director of P.T.and E.. The implications for both the home owner on new residential estates, who has not been protected against the possibility of a liability to street works charges, and the taxpayer, who will now be asked to bear the cost of a failure to ensure that estate roads have been constructed soundly, could be very serious indeed.
This apparent attempt at concealment was evident in the equivocation, which I experienced repeatedly in my correspondence [you might care to refresh your memory of the contents of Appendix D of my report and in particular of the letters and/or e-mails D 9-24 inclusive, which show the equivocation in relation to just one incident and which hardly suggest an officer who is conscious of the importance of either ethical standards of conduct or the nurturing of sound member-officer relationships, which clearly is a major concern of yours according to your most recent letter.] and in my meetings with the Director of P.T. & E. in the seven month period before you approached the Head of Audit Services in October, 2002.
It was no less evident in the so called "independent and comprehensive review" by the Head of Structures, which was established ostensibly by the Director to answer the serious questions, which he had failed to answer in the matter of the construction of the Sandy Lane by-pass and the adjacent residential estates. As you will know, its UTTER INADEQUACY in this respect, together with the GROSS MISREPRESENTATION of the chronology of the construction of the developer's section of the by-pass and the failure to establish any culpability, was exposed in my detailed report.[vide Response to the P.T. and E. Report on Sandy Lane, 28 November, 2002] In truth, it seemed pre-occupied with diverting attention to procedural modification when bizarrely most of the procedures which it recommended, as I was able to demonstrate at some length, were already in place!![vide Section C, Pages 31 to 34 of my report, dated 28 October, 2002]
This unfortunate tendency to conceal was also apparent in the short report by the designate network manager on the practice relating to road adoption procedures observed on six residential estates [2 of which were actually in my own electoral division ] in the course of construction in Camborne-Redruth. His observations neglected to mention, not only that properties on five of the estates, which he observed in my presence, were IMPROPERLY OCCUPIED in contravention of council policy before the requirements of a Part 1 Certificate had been met but also that, with perhaps the exception of one estate [ where an A.P.C. deposit was in place but it was so inadequate that after 4 years of residence the residents at Parc-an Bans are still without satisfactorily completed streets], properties had been unlawfully built before a cash deposit or bond had been lodged with the highway authority.
The enormity of the latter failure by the council, which has been masked by this officer, is impossible to reconcile with its statutory duty, imposed by the Highways Act 1980, to protect homeowners on new residential estates against the eventuality of street works' charges. It is difficult to understand how such irregularities could have taken place without the knowledge of the County Council's own legal department and presumably, therefore, of even the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer, himself. Under Section 5 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, it appears to have been the clear duty of the Monitoring Officer to report to the full council any cases where he considers the council or committee or sub-committee or any officer be acting unlawfully, improperly or in a way likely to cause maladministration which, as you will know, occurs when a council does not carry out its lawful duties or follow it own policies. I shall be requesting this officer, therefore, to advise me when this requirement was fulfilled and the nature of the resultant action taken by the full council.
That both these seriously flawed reports, which merited serious criticism, were, without any critical examination whatsoever, actually accorded source material status in the Internal Audit report, dated 6 January, 2203, [vide Pages 25 and 26] beggars belief while my own effort, which by the production of extensive tangible evidence and by raising a number of serious questions was in fact the very essence of “source material”, was not so regarded and was not even considered worthy of acknowledgement!!
Even worse was the report by Internal Audit, which concerned itself exclusively with the matter of procedural recommendations, which has been the pre-occupation of the internal departmental report and no doubt would have been the concern of the aborted investigation of the "independent" report by the Chief Executive's department, if the terms of reference proposed in the agenda for the Community Life Scrutiny Committee meeting on 9 October, 2002 were any guide. The matter of the disregard of the serious violation of the Council's policies and a statutory duty, which it was the duty of the Internal Audit to report to both the County Treasurer and the Monitoring Officer, who in turn appears to have been required to pass it on to the full council, was evidently without significance.
With respect no amount of glib talk about action plans almost 18 months after I first raised the issue of the scale of the developer's failures on the by-pass at Sandy Lane and over 15 months after I raised the issues of homes being built unlawfully and occupied improperly on adjacent residential estates, can disguise an apparently massive level of incompetence and even a seemingly extraordinary concern for the interests of the developer. This is encapsulated in a written statement by the Director of T.P.E., who seemed to be oblivious to the need for the council to carry out its statutory duty by seemingly attaching more importance to easing the cash flows of developers than to protecting the interests of home owners on new residential estates and, perhaps, to be condoning a criminal act when, in his letter to me on 3 July, 2002, he wrote:
"In practice because of cash flow issues and because the bond usually attracts significant interest charges, a developer usually delays signing the agreement until such times as sales are taking place". (click here for a copy of the letter)
Of course, I can't speak for my fellow members but I must make it quite clear that, as a county councillor, I am not here either to condone the failure of the council to carry out its own policies and a statutory duty or to express a preferential concern for the interests of developers over those of the people I represent. I can only assume from your failure, in your reply to my letter, to comment on this extraordinary statement that it is not something which evidently causes you concern, even though the apparent existence of some evidence of a lack of uniformity in the treatment of developers, in relation to the Advanced Payment Code procedure, might conceivably raise questions of a very serious nature.
The situation, where management can pre-empt members from holding it to account for such serious failings as the failure to implement council policy and statutory duty by the expedient of claiming that it is essential to have a review of development control procedures to establish whether procedural changes are required, is just not acceptable. This has invariably been the well established practice of all its review panels such as the internal departmental report, the aborted committee set up under the chairmanship of Rob Andrew and even the recent Internal Audit review. If elected representatives are to be prevented from undertaking their bounden duty, then this council is completely beyond effective democratic control.
What appears more objectionable is the way in which the agenda for the Scrutiny Committee on 9 October 2002 was changed. Originally, it had been the intention to steer the committee in the direction of accepting a move to support an " independent" investigation by an officer from your own department, but the interception and impounding by the Solicitor/ Monitoring Officer of a highly critical letter, which I was intending to send on 4 October to all my colleagues of the committee before its next meeting, and the discovery that I had already approached the Head of Audit Services to conduct an investigation, apparently induced a change of plan. It would appear that you may have decided to hijack my approach and to present the committee with a fait accomplis. Accordingly, it was essential to change the original item on the agenda. You approached me by phone to acquaint me with the fact that Mark Kaczmarek, the acting chairman, had agreed to change the agenda item and therefore very reluctantly I agreed. I immediately went to Mr Kaczmarek's house to find that he was on the phone to the County Solicitor actually bluntly refusing to change the agenda item. The next morning Mr Kaczmarek, having previously attended the work programme and the pre-agenda meetings, turned up, in considerable pain and distress, to chair the Community Life Scrutiny Committee meeting only to discover that the indisposed Chairman, Mr Gillbard, having engaged in a short briefing meeting, of which Mr Kaczmarek had no knowledge, would be chairing the meeting. [Confirmation that there was an agenda change can be obtained from Councillor Lobb] To his credit the Chairman was persuaded by his vice-chairman's story and did allow the issue to be discussed in the afternoon's meeting. Members, however, finding it difficult of accept the evidence of apparent sharp practice, did agree “to note” the Internal Audit's investigation, which they now see as a dubious exercise.
Furthermore, the credibility of an action plan, which is predicated on an assumption that the failure to implement council policy is attributable to procedural deficiency, which requires procedural modification, is impaired by the inability to produce a scintilla of evidence to give substance to such an assumption. The Audit report, while detailing what can only be described as a massive catalogue of failure, conspicuously avoids any consideration of why that failure might have occurred and hence, in such circumstances, there can be little confidence in its prescription.
Even a cursory examination would seem to suggest that the failure to carry out council policies, including a statutory duty, has been the result of a failure to carry out the requisite enforcement measures as well as the inspection procedures, and others, which were laid down in the Cornwall Design Guide, and which were designed specifically to ensure the implementation of those very policies. Since the Cornwall Design Guide was compiled under your supervision as the then County Surveyor and bears your signature, one assumes that the procedures, which are now apparently so defective, were in fact, compiled under your leadership. Of course, even were there any procedural limitations, it might have been expected that they would have come to light during senior management's periodic evaluations of the efficacy of systemic and procedural functionality. However, the fact that the system was in such a state of disarray, which is evident from the substantial evidence provided by my own and by the Audit report, does not appear to reflect at all well on the rigour of these periodic evaluations and, therefore, on the effectiveness of managerial supervision.
In short, while the failure to comply with procedures is evident on page after page of the Audit report, the remarkable conclusion it seems to draw from that indiscipline is not that vigorous disciplinary action is required but just procedural alteration and adjustment, which incidentally should have been picked up by the routine procedural evaluations. It is difficult to see other than that Audit's recommendations will be regarded as a "cop-out", the purpose of which has apparently been to divert attention from any consideration of possible maladministration and the abysmal failure of senior management, of whom it would indeed appear to be a damning indictment that such recommendations have had to be made at all. One might have assumed that it would have been quite capable of implementing council policy, without having to be provided with the minutiae of a procedural road map, which would appear to be more appropriate for others than for highly paid, and presumably, intelligent people.
However, the credibility of the action plan is even diminished further by its failure to take into account the serious criticism of the democratic deficit, which relates to officers perception of officer-member relationships.
The Audit report's claim that this failure is being addressed by “revisiting the protocol and procedures" [29] may be seen as both inadequate and even ludicrous. No evidence has been adduced to support this specious claim and indeed a highly paid chief officer might reasonably have been expected to have clearly understood the essential principles underlying officer-member relationships and to have grasped, without the need to be reminded of, the importance of recommendations [30] and [31]. It was all very well for senior management to agree that the matter "will be referred to the County Solicitor for review and update purposes" but, how can any credibility be attached to his recommendations presented to the Standards Committee on 14 June 2002 when the existing Protocol of member-officer relationships ALREADY states the rights of members to access information and Council documents. Paragraph 8.1.states : " Members are free to approach any County Council department to obtain such information, explanation and advice [about that department's functions] as they may reasonably need to assist them in discharging their role as members of the County" Such approaches should normally be directed at the Chief Officer, it goes on to say.
The existing arrangements would seem to be clear and quite adequate to deal with the situation which arose. I have followed the correct procedure and I yet I have been unable to get answers. It is true that the Chief Officer, after a lot of prevarication, did eventually set up an internal “independent and comprehensive" review. While it transpires from the Internal Audit report that the author was concerned with whether corrective action was now being taken and whether procedures could be improved for the future, the Director's written statements makes it clear that he would be asking one of his senior managers "to undertake an independent and comprehensive review, of the whole process, including actions and in actions" and in regard to the list of questions, which was a sample of those requiring answers, " I have asked for these to be included in the review and for replies to be presented to you on completion".
Needless to say I never got the information which the director promised and it is this fact which requires examination rather than the peripheral matter of whether the author of the report had been given sufficiently explicit terms of references. Indeed, the fact that he hadn't only adds to the Director's apparent culpability. Moreover, the pre-occupation with a revision of the Guidance on Answering Members' Questions to include review procedure [point 10] rather than to emphasise that the existing procedure was eminently capable of addressing the persistent failure to answer a member's question was bizarre in the extreme. It demonstrates all too clearly the use of spurious procedural change as a means of deflecting criticism from an officer's failures and the need for disciplinary action
Thirdly, there is the matter of a lack of candour and complete honesty, which undermines members' trust in some senior officers. There is abundant evidence in the e-mails and letters contained in Appendix D of my report of the evasion, obfuscation and the half-truth, which has characterised the approach of a senior officer.
In a letter on 14 June 2002, the Director of P.T.and E. confirmed the fact that he had asked,
“a senior manager within my department to undertake an independent and comprehensive review of the whole process, including actions or inactions, to prepare a report with recommendations for possible procedural changes. You left with me a number of written questions [on sheets headed "Examples of Questions, to which I shall be pressing for answers"], some of which were answered in whole or in part at our meeting. Rather than reply at length now, I have asked for these questions to be included in the review, and for replies to be presented to you on completion."
While I was not aware that any of the questions on my submitted list had been answered in whole or in part at the meeting or that the outstanding questions, to which I had for months been unable to get answers, were also addressed in whole or in part, though subsequently I did become conscious of the fact that the Director's words, relating to both a review of the "whole process, including actions and inactions" and to the answering of questions, seemed to be rather empty and meaningless.
When, therefore, it emerges that a senior manager was apparently not provided with precise terms of reference and that he seemed to be unaware of the need to provide answers to my questions, one might have thought that the apparent discrepancy, between what he [i.e. the Director] had told me and what the structural engineer believed his remit to have been [ if the comments, recorded in 3.2 on Page 53, and especially the ultimate paragraph, of the Audit report, are accurate] might have attracted the attention of those in Internal Audit, who were purportedly conducting a "thorough and independent investigation." Moreover, the Structural Engineer's claim that he "reviewed the Sandy Lane scheme on the basis of whether corrective action was now being taken and whether procedures could be improved for the future" is, if I may say so, fatuous to say the least. It was readily apparent, almost two months before he undertook his review, that corrective measures had already been taken. Unfortunately, his assertion both ignores not only my question as to why the corrective action had not taken place months previously [and was, incidentally, very probably only taken as a result of my vociferous complaints] and seems to be at variance with the Director's specific promise in relation to "questions" and "inactions" quoted at length on the previous page. Clearly, there can be little confidence in an Audit report which, in spite of the fact that its authors had been fully apprised of the situation, contains no evidence of its having addressed a single pertinent question to either the Director or the Head of Structures in relation to these apparent discrepancies. The vigorous cross-checking of statements seems to be a method which, apparently, has had no part to play in the production of this "thorough" report.
What therefore, it might reasonably be asked, could conceivably be so significant as to explain such behaviour and, having regard for the whole record of apparent evasion and obfuscation, what could possibly be the reason for such lack of candour? What is it that is so significant that it must be concealed? Why is it that the Director, who had only taken up post on 1 January 2002, was adopting such an evasive role in regard to questions which related primarily to events which took place before his appointment? Had, perhaps, it anything to do with the fact that the Chief Executive had been his immediate predecessor?
If a senior officer has felt the need to be so disingenuous, it is hardly surprising that considerable pressure has been placed on the Community Life Scrutiny Committee to approve, without adequate time for detailed scrutiny and the summoning of the relevant officials, the Audit report's rationale-deficient recommendations.
The agenda for the meeting on 24 January, revealed what may be construed as the intention of steamrollering the Audit recommendations through the committee by the device of placing them as the last item on the agenda and by an appearance of the Head of Audit Services to describe his recommendations, without any opportunity for committee members to see the report. This was halted by my three page e-mail to the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer on 18 January, which had the effect of removing this item from the agenda and the convening of a special meeting to consider it on 6 February. In fact, this was hardly more satisfactory as the circulation of the report only a few days before the meeting still did not allow anywhere near enough time for its adequate assimilation, which was extremely difficult in view of a number of considerations.
Not only was there conflicting evidence, relating to its origin and its alleged terms of reference, which require an explanation, but there was also no mention of the very serious issues of the contravention of council policies and a statutory duty. Moreover, there was a complete lack of evidence to support the mere hypothesis that the cause of the failures was attributable to faulty procedures. In addition, members of this committee were not made fully aware of the facts both because of the persistent failure to answer legitimate questions and the inaccurate presentation of reality in their reports by some officers to this committee. Furthermore, the report's structure hardly facilitated rapid comprehension. A sequence, where the recommendations came first with the additional material in four Appendices, was not conducive to understanding, as might well have been the intention. This, of course helped to conceal that there was no evidence to show how or why any particular recommendation was necessary and would be likely to resolve a particular problem. This served only to disguise that the fact the scale of the shortcomings was attributable not to faulty procedures but to implementing existing procedures. This, in turn, obscured the reality that the failure to comply with procedures is not resolved by procedural adjustment but by disciplinary action.
The response of the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer, who had been apprised of many of these problems in my memo of 18 January, and who should have been aware of those which were not, might be seen as disingenuous when he says, in his reply received on 5 February 2003 “I see no reason why it [i.e. the committee] cannot consider the recommendations as written or amend them if it so wishes". Having regard for the circumstances depicted in the previous paragraph, where officers were not offering disinterested or impartial advice to members so that they could make an informed judgement, one might have thought that the interests of the council would have been better served had the scrutiny committee not been handicapped by unnecessary time constraints, especially when the recommendations were of such dubious merit, and when, in any case, it was clearly the duty of officers to carry out the EXISTING council policies. It might be wondered whether the insistence on the 6 February meeting was a collusive effort to steamroller the issue through the committee, before it had time to grasp the full implications.
The idea that it was vital to get the approval of this committee in order to implement the recommendations at the earliest opportunity sits uneasily with the record of highways management, who for years had paid scant regard to some of the most important policies and procedures of this council and simply needed to carry out the requirements which already existed. Even on 12 December 2002, as recorded in the minutes the Director of P.T.and E., in reply to my question as to why enforcement action had not been taken against the developer at Carknown Gardens, who was building houses despite not having provided security to protect house owners against street charges as was the requirement of the Highway Act 1980, expressed no concern and indicated that "He would have to have to await the outcome of the review". The blunt truth is that it was a lawful duty, which did NOT depend on the pronouncement of Internal Audit and on the approval of the Community Life Scrutiny Committee.
Even were it possible to produce evidence of inherent procedural limitation, there would be extremely uncomfortable questions for senior management since it would not say much for its skills in the formulation of procedures, which are now claimed to be faulty, or for their periodic reviews to ensure that procedures were functioning effectively.
It is ironic that an alarming malfunctioning of the managerial system itself evidently gives cause for no concern, whereas unsubstantiated claims of procedural deficiencies apparently do!! Since the case for procedural modification has not been made, there will inevitably be suspicion that the scrutiny committee has been steamrollered into approval of the Audit Report's recommendations, which were ostensibly, but seemingly spuriously, designed to prevent recurrences of non-compliance rather than by addressing the fundamental issue of culpability, in order to get management off the mal-administration hook by the creation of an illusion of dynamism after years of inactivity.
It is in the light of these considerations, that one would doubt whether much significance can really be attached to your claim that the "detailed action plan" has been approved by members.
FOURTHLY, with great respect, I am unable to accept your claim that you initiated the investigation by Internal Audit.
As far as I am aware it was I who, on the advice of Councillor Biscoe made the arrangements and first approached the Head of Internal Audit. This I did on 30 September, 2002, when I was assured by Mr Phyall, who was obviously concerned by what I had to say, that he would be prepared to investigate my concerns. He insisted that his investigation would indeed be "thorough and independent", would secure answers to ALL my queries, relating not only to the construction of both the Sandy Lane by-pass and to adjacent residential estates but also to the state of officer-member relationships and the problems of a democratic deficit, and would have the authority if need be to call in the district auditor and even the fraud squad.
Perhaps, he will have the opportunity to explain to the District Auditor shortly why he had not thought it necessary, in the circumstances, to approach him. Perhaps, he might also care to explain why the fraud squad, whom I first approached in the strictest confidence, were not even interested in the evidence I had to offer but yet had every confidence in internal audit’s work, should have approached the Head of Audit Services to reveal these facts in breach of confidentiality. This is a matter which I intend raising with the Chief Constable. Moreover, he emphasised the advantages he would have in being able to demand access to all documents, financial and otherwise, which would not necessarily be available to a single issue panel, the setting up of which was favoured by a number of members of the Community Life Scrutiny Committee. He even supplied me with the protocol, which relates to his position but at no time did he refer to YOUR involvement.
The agenda for the meeting on 9 October, gives no indication of your intervention, evidence for which appears only on 8 October when your urgent phone calls to the vice-chairman of the Scrutiny Committee and myself reveal that YOU were attempting to remove from the agenda the proposal for Rob Andrews from your department to head an inquiry, on the grounds that YOU had now referred the matter to Internal Audit. Significantly perhaps, on this very day, we learn from Appendix 2 on Page 28 of the Audit report that "Mr Hicks' ....concerns were set out in a confidential memorandum dated 8th October from the Chief Executive to John Lobb, Leader of the Council, with this title 'Development Control and Agreements with Developers' ." [Vide earlier comments on this episode on Page 5]
FIFTHLY, while I must thank you for the offer of a meeting, I have to say, in all frankness but with regret, that I cannot see, in the circumstances, the purpose that such a meeting would serve.
I have already met separately with the Director of T. P. and E., the Network Manager and the Leader of the Council on local residential estates. Since these meetings have ALL failed to produce any meaningful result, I cannot see, in the light of my own experience, how I can now expect enlightenment on the plethora of queries, which have been posed and which in spite of the work of a departmental and an internal audit investigation, have remained unanswered. Moreover, the suggestion that a meeting on site, "would give the opportunity to discuss your remaining questions" implies that some of my concerns have actually been addressed. This is something of which, at least so far as my major concerns are concerned, I am unaware and I would be grateful if you would kindly indicate which, in your view, have been answered.
SIXTHLY, your assertion that I knew that the investigation was "thorough" and "independent” appears to be inaccurate on two counts.
Firstly, it is incorrect because my knowledge extended only to knowing that, whatever the attributes of the investigation might have been, they did not include either thoroughness or independence.
Secondly, your assertion that the audit investigation was "thorough" is only true within the narrow confines of its terms of reference, while the idea that it was " independent" does not, in the sense of being free from all control, stand up to examination. Not only did it not have control of its terms of reference, but it is evident from Internal Audit Protocol [18], that "In normal circumstances, the Head of Audit Services will discuss or agree conclusions and recommendations with the relevant Chief Officer." What is all too apparent from the report is that ample opportunity was indeed given for such discussion and agreement but what is not quite so apparent is why, in the light of the considerations presented in this communication, one of which would appear to involve a matter which may well be ultra vires, the prevailing circumstances should have been considered NORMAL. According to Protocol [18], "In EXCEPTIONAL circumstances, the head of Audit Services shall have UNFETTERED discretion in reaching and reporting on conclusions and recommendations in Audit reports."
If a contravention of a statutory duty and the County Council's policies, if a disregard of the interests of the home owner on new residential estates both by a failure to secure cash deposits or bonds and by allowing the occupation of houses contrary to good health and safety practice, before the issue of a Part One Certificate, and of the interests of the taxpayer by the adoption of roads of dubious construction, if discreditable behaviour to conceal serious shortcomings, if a failure to secure openness and transparency and if a toleration of a serious democratic deficit, each represents a condition of NORMALITY, then one must wonder exactly what could conceivably be said to be EXCEPTIONAL? Until such time as this situation has been clarified - and one might wonder whether Internal Audit might actually be more profitably engaged in modifying its own procedures than offering such flawed recommendations for amendments to highways procedures- any doubts about Audit's independence will remain.
I must point out that there seems a tendency on occasion to dismiss criticism by the remark that Internal Audit has looked at "all these matters in great detail". This was indeed the basis of the move by the Solicitor/Monitoring Officer, of all people, to divert the Scrutiny Committee from the move to call in the District Auditor at its meeting this July. This, however, if I might say so, is really not good enough as it is apparent that the investigation WAS constrained by its terms of reference. Questions relating to responsibility and culpability did not apparently fall within its capacity to explore and it is evident, from the comments made by the Head of Internal Audit that the responsibility for the failure, obvious as it was, constituted a matter for management itself to resolve. However, in the light of its seemingly appalling record of mismanagement over the years and the legacy of its failure, its apparently unseemly attempts at evasion and obfuscation in the face of questioning and the alacrity with which all the apparently innocuous recommendations of internal audit were received in much the same way as the descent of manna would be received by a famished man, I would have the most serious reservations about the capacity of management to discipline itself. Reservations, however, are not restricted solely to this consideration, since in view of the limitations in the investigative power of Internal Audit, there must be equal concern regarding the wisdom of spending thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on such a pointless exercise.
There needs to be an explanation of why £20,000 of public money has been spent on an investigation, when
Explanation is also required as to why there has been a further expenditure of some £300,000 on the implementation of recommendations, the rationale of which has not been established and the opportunity for the effective scrutiny of which has been denied. Whatever the financial constraints may have been in the 1990s, there are evidently no such constraints now!!!
Clearly, these considerations should be thoroughly examined by the Scrutiny Committee and, if it is to perform its intended function and any semblance of accountability and transparency is to prevail, it must have the opportunity to question at some length such officers as the Chief Executive, the Director of P.T. and E., and the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer. Above all the Head of Audit Services should be required to make clear in an explicit manner that the devastating criticism which is implicit on page after page of Appendix 2 of his report is in fact at best a testament to massive incompetence and to explain, among a number of other things, the rationale in detail behind each of his 31 procedural recommendations.
I hope this is a reasonably detailed response to your letter.
Yours sincerely
Graeme Hicks
cc The Leader of the Council
The Chairman of the Council
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