MORE than £6 million has been “creatively diverted” away from debt repayment into Warrington Borough Council’s general reserves with no indication of what the money is to be used for, a Labour councillor has claimed.
Coun Peter Carey – who was formerly the council’s finance director – says the “financial windfall” equates to approximately £100 per household across the borough.
The Fairfield and Howley councillor, who was elected to the council at the May elections, called on the controlling Lib Dem-Conservative group to face up to its stewardship responsibilities and improve the transparency of reporting and discussion of major financial issues
He welcomed new proposals to review the role of the council’s Governance Overview and Scrutiny Committee to place greater emphasis on its audit and financial monitoring role.
Coun Carey cited the recent presentation of the performance and finance monitoring report for the year 2009/10 at a meeting of the council’s executive board.
This was approved without any significant discussion or debate even though it reported major variations in the council’s performance.
These included achievement of only one third of its stated performance targets and a claim to have achieved a satisfactory break-even position on the revenue budget even though Childrens’ Services showed an overspend of £2 million.
He added: “In addition there was no mention in the report of a technical accounting adjustment whereby £6.2 million was creatively diverted away from debt repayment into general reserves.”
This had been only mentioned in passing by Coun Paul Campbell, executive member for finance, in his summing up and was not even mentioned in the minutes of the meeting.
Coun Carey said: “Not only does this run contrary to the new coalition government’s policy of reducing public sector debt, there was no statement as to what the council’s intentions are with regard to this financial windfall equating on average to approximately £100 per household.”
