The Monitoring Officer                                                                                                                     50, Adelaide Road

Cornwall County Council                                                                                                                  Redruth

County Hall                                                                                                                                     TR15 2HQ

Truro

                                                                                                                                                     18 January 2003

Dear Mr Kennaway

As you know at the meeting of the Community Life PDSC held on the 9th of October, it was forcefully argued that the full audit report should be made available to this  committee and that our deliberations be held in open public session.  You may recall at the time that a member intimated that it was his intention, were  any  manipulation to occur, to  resign and  fight a single issue by-election, with the attendant advantages of press coverage.  

No doubt, you will also  recollect my challenging your interpretation of the word  appropriate in the phrase “the appropriate reporting of the findings to members”.  You explained, if my recollection is correct, that “appropriate” would cover those eventualities relating only to particular phrases having legal implications.  But I have no recollection of your suggesting that this particular word could justify the report not coming to this committee. I have checked with the vice-chairman and he confirms the accuracy of my recollection.

You will understand my surprise, therefore, on receiving the agenda   this morning, to find that the audit report was not enclosed.  I am hoping that this was merely an oversight as there can be no question, in my view, of a committee with specific responsibilities for scrutiny being asked to make judgements on original material, to which it is denied access and which purports to be a response to a member’s concerns.

I must respectfully point out  that, should the exclusion of the report from the committee’s perusal and deliberations not be an oversight,  I shall immediately propose  that the matter be excluded from consideration by the committee until such time as the report is made available.  Even then adequate time for its thorough assimilation would need to be available, having regard for the fact that the practice of giving this important committee wads of material shortly  before its meetings is frankly to ensure its emasculation and to reduce it to a state of impotence and irrelevance. Similarly, it should surely have a greater degree of independence and control of what it wishes to scrutinise more thoroughly and the people it wishes, or does not wish, either to interview or address it. For example, in this particular case, there would seem to be a strong case for suggesting that it should be the committee, having read the report, which should decide as to whether or not it wishes to consult its author.

I fully appreciate why there may well be substantial reasons, as have been detailed in Comment 9 in the agenda, for the exclusion of the  public at our meeting on Thursday, 23 January. However, I must point out that these reasons clearly do justify not making the report available to the committee. I can re-assure  those  officers, who may be concerned lest the public is unaware of exactly what is going on, that I have every intention , in due course, of making appropriate disclosures in the local  and  national press, with whom I have already taken the precaution of making preliminary contacts. Such disclosure, of course, will include the reservations which I have regarding the integrity of the Internal Audit report, about which I have  already consulted the Audit Commission in London.

Finally, I must express my concern  that an issue, which could have the most profound implications for the County Council and some of its officers, including those at a senior level, has been relegated to the last item on the agenda. It can only give substance to those who already, rightly or wrongly,  have serious worries about the manipulation of the democratic process.

As the monitoring officer, you have since 8 August 2002 been kept fully informed of a distinctly worrying situation. You will know that I have raised many questions  to which I have simply  been unable  to get answers, even though the overwhelmingly majority relate to issues which have a direct relevance to the interests of the very people I have been elected to serve as their representative on this County Council.  Copious letters have been met by evasion, half-truths and  possibly even by untruths. Meetings allegedly designed for my enlightenment have proved of little use and appear to have been designed as a stalling mechanism. Reports, including those by the Structural Engineer and now, I regretfully I have to say, the Internal Audit, have failed to produce  the answers I require.

You know from my very extensive documentation that there must be serious and      legitimate worries  regarding the apparent failure  

i] to implement fundamental requirements of the Highway Act 1980 ,

ii] to give due regard to some of the important  policies and the procedures of the County Council,

[At the Sandy Lane by-pass, for example, the departure from the procedures  outlined in that  glossy document, the Cornwall Design Guide, which superficially is so impressive, has apparently been so great that one can readily understand why the terms of reference of the Report may have been changed and why there is so much concern that the taxpayer may have to fork out to maintain a road, the soundness of which, in the developer’s section, is open to doubt.]

iii] to give due consideration to the interest of house owners on new residential estates, whom the County Council has a statutory duty to protect from street works charges, and the  overriding  priority which seems to have been given to easing the cash-flow problems of developers,

iv]  to protect the taxpayer,  given the evidence of the Godolphin experience, the Sandy Lane by-pass and of the adjacent residential estates, as well as of the wider Camborne-Redruth area , that roads have been adopted and evidently are still likely to be adopted, without adequate assurance that their construction has been sufficiently sound as to justify their being  maintained at public expense

v] to eradicate the chaotic way in which procedures are being carried out in some important areas,

vi] to  identify  those who bear responsibility for the failures listed above and to take any disciplinary action against those who bear that responsibility

[Incidentally, the allegation of officers that I was engaging in conducting a witch hunt in wanting to have those, who may have miserably failed in their responsibilities, held to account is, if might say so, the most arrogant bureaucratic nonsense. Such a response only demeans those who make it and,in my view, is not only highly irresponsible and reflects a  seeming belief that bureaucrats are not constrained by such a matter as accountability,  but it also can be construed as a discreditable attempt to impugn the motives of a member, who has a responsibility only to his electorate, and seemingly to persuade him to betray the trust reposed in him so convincingly demonstrated at the polls.] and

vi] to ensure that the democratic integrity of the County Council is assured by a frank response to members’ queries and by the elimination of evident blatant manipulation.

As a result of these apparent failures, members are surely entitled to a detailed explanation  of  the concerns, which have  prompted both my own detailed report of 28 November and my original approach to the internal audit as early as 31 September. To simply have recourse to a "last item on the agenda"  approach, based on the Internal Audit's presentation of the findings of a report, the terms of reference of which were dramatically circumscribed since our original meeting, will add immeasurably to the prevailing cynicism.

Any notion, that an urgent consideration of the Audit Report is necessary, is difficult to reconcile with the prolonged failure to address any of the serious problems  and any  suggestion that the failure of this committee to give immediate  approval for  the Report's recommendations for procedural revision, will in some way inhibit the Council’s officers from efficiently discharging their responsibilities would, on any serious appraisal of the evidence, be quite laughable.

The simple facts are that the failures identified above are, without any exaggeration, of  really mind-boggling proportions and that policy and procedures were in place previously, but they were just not being implemented. If procedures were ignored previously  what guarantee can  there be that new procedures will be followed any more effectively, unless management itself is drastically shaken up.

The challenge to Internal Audit must be to demonstrate precisely which of the failures I have identified previously would be solved by the introduction of the new procedures which  it has recommended. However, to make this criticism is not to deny that some procedural change may be helpful but it cannot also be forgotten that if inadequate procedures are actually the cause of some problems, then management, who devised them cannot again escape their share of responsibility. In short, irrespective of whether or not the problems  stem from  faulty procedures or from a failure to implement satisfactory procedures,  management, which does not work for chicken-feed, is firmly impaled on the horns of an inescapable dilemma.

Having particular regard for your position as the County Solicitor and the County Council’s Monitoring Officer, I would be especially grateful for a response to my serious concerns. and I offer my anticipatory thanks. Perhaps, I should conclude by indicating that I shall be forwarding this communication to all members of the scrutiny committee.

Yours sincerely

Graeme Hicks CC

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