Thursday, October 16, 2008

Iceland claims another scalp

Whilst the investigation into Sutton's Icelandic exposure gathers pace, another amazing story hit the press. The Audit Commission, which is the watchdog that looks into council spending, had put £10m of its own money with an Icelandic bank.

The Conservative chairman of Sutton's Audit committee has convened an emergency meeting for next week to look into our own problems. The committee will consider a review into the matter conducted by someone with considerable financial experience within both local government and the private sector. However, Audit Committee only has a remit to look at the nuts and bolts of whether correct procedures were followed. Political accountability lies within a committee called the Scrutiny Overview Committee which is chaired by a Liberal Democrat. We have insisted that this is looked at as an urgent matter at the next meeting which is on Tuesday 28th October.

As an aside, the photo used to illustrate this post looks remarkably unblocked, thus clearly demonstrating that I sourced it from the Internet rather than taking my hard-earned cash outside with a camera:)

UPDATE: Sutton's external auditors have changed this year...to the Audit Commission.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope there will be no more confusion between the Audit Commission:
http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/

and the National Audit Office:
http://www.nao.org.uk/

Unknown said...

The National Audit Office audits the Audit Commission's accounts. The Audit Commission has taken over from Baker Tilly as the external auditor for Sutton's accounts. The National Audit Office has purview over both the Audit Commission and the audited accounts of Sutton. Couldn't be clearer Bob:)

John M Ward said...

Local Councils are these days audited and inspected incessantly, and the costs fall to the council to pay for the work. Here are Medway Council's audit and inspection fees paid over a number of years, just to give an idea of how this has escalated during the Labour years in government.