No fireworks: just a £1+ million damp squib

At last, the Price Waterhouse Cooper audit report is out. At last, we can see what the Council Tax-payers of Tower Hamlets have paid for: paid for in terms of the charges made by the auditors and paid for in terms of diverting the attention of officers who should have been working on delivering services to digging out information the auditors required.

And no one, anywhere in it, accuses Mayor Lutfur Rahman of fraud.

Let’s just say that once more to make sure everyone is totally clear: no one, anywhere in it, accuses Mayor Lutfur Rahman of fraud.

The auditors say that they made 290 requests for information or documentation: no wonder it’s taken seven months for them to reach their conclusions. That’s four months longer than planned: but there’s no one doing a risk analyis on why the auditors time estimates are out by nearly 50%.

The auditors have not put a summary of their conclusions in their report, and it will take us a while to examine the report thoroughly and weigh up what they say. However, a first reading suggests that there have been certain problems with separation between the mayor’s and the Council’s duties – and the duties and/or rights of individual councillors. Problems, though, can be solved. Problems, though, can be experienced in most local authorities: who, for example, is looking into the disquiet being expressed locally at the way that the London Borough of Newham – where the directly elected mayor is Robin Wales – has kept the Carpenters estate empty for some years, when it could have been used for at least temporary accommodation? Who is looking at the scandal of homeless families being dispersed from London to outlying parts of the country, far from the support of friends and family – or the scandal of people being made to pay a bedroom tax even when there is no smaller accommodation available? Who, for that matter, is looking at the scandal of a Government which cannot find an independent judge to chair an inquiry into endemic sexual abuse of children and possible cover-ups of it – because all judges it declared fit for purpose turned out to have compromising links with senior members of the governing political party?

Scandal is relative. Political vitriol, alas, is not – so we are likely to be facing triumphant crowing from the two main political parties in the borough, and probably their national offices too. Worse: in a matter of minutes, Pickles is due to tell the House of Commons what he intends to do to Tower Hamlets on the basis of what the report has managed to put together. It is not likely that he will decide to champion the statement voters made back in May: he didn’t send the auditors in to Tower Hamlets to see them come out without giving him a reason to over-ride that vote of confidence. Watch for yourself on:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=16245

So, dear Council Tax-payer, a bloke called Eric up at Westminster took a decision to spend over £1 million of your money on this audit and report (after your two local MPs lobbied him): who is going to scrutinise whether that is “best value for money”?

•See the auditors’ report on https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/370277/140311_-_final_inspection_report.pdf