Audits of Slough council’s previous financial decisions are taking longer than anticipated – hampering its ability to scrutinise them.
At the Corporate Improvement Scrutiny Committee on Thursday evening (January 4), members of the panel looked at progress made since the directions of the Secretary of State in December 2021.
The council’s dire financial position caused external commissioners to be appointed to help it sort out the mess.
Commissioners submit regular reports to the Secretary of State. Two years on, the commissioners’ have written three reports so far, the latest of which was published on September 14.
Speaking at Thursdays’ meeting, leader of the council Dexter Smith (Con, Colnbrook & Poyle), said there have been some delays to the auditing process, due to factors outside of Slough’s control.
Cllr Smith described a ‘backlog’ of local government audits due to a shortage of auditing services available.
Grant Thornton is doing an external audit for Slough, but there are problems. It has had to give a ‘qualified opinion’ on some records, which means the financial statements ‘contain material misstatements or omissions.’
“We’re told there’s a lack of data to support them,” said Cllr Smith.
Because of these challenges, Cllr Smith said he is not sure that the council will get an audit for 2019/20 by the end of the financial year.
“That’s why it’s important we do internal audit work,” he said.
“Everything is being done to speed up the course of the audit but we’re in the hands of Grant Thornton.”
Cllr Smith spoke of the finical issues ‘dating back to the former administration’.
Its current finances hinge on these past problems, he said. Adult social care was ‘under-provided for’ and the projections for what would be needed to fund temporary accommodation was ‘unrealistic’, Cllr Smith said.
As a result, there was a £4.7million overspend on temporary accommodation, he said.
Within the housing revenue budget, a figure of 0 was put against a key aspect of it, where a figure of -£39million should have been recorded, he added.
As a result, this adds £5million to the minimum revenue provision – the charge for paying off the borrowing made to finance the capital programme (fund for larger projects).
“We have this £5million to cover [us] over the course of the next four years,” said Cllr Smith.
“We are absolutely focused like a laser beam on the journey and cleaning up the financial messes we inherited.”
However, references to the former administration and its perceived errors evoked the ire of leader of the opposition Cllr Kaur Man (Lab & Co-op, Britwell).
She said Cllr Smith was expressing his opinion and it was against the committee’s best-practise guidance to make party political or partizan statements.
But Cllr Smith countered that it was ‘important to understand the difficult position the council is in.’
“We’re in year one of a four-year term. I don’t see that as electioneering. I just want to set the record straight,” he said.
He said there had been ‘misinformation’ banded about regarding the council’s current situation.
Cllr Mann replied that, in her mind, this confirmed that Cllr Smith was saying he did not plan to follow the committee’s best practice guidance.
However, councillors agreed to move the meeting on.
In terms of Slough Borough’s financial recovery, Cllr Smith said the biggest ‘derail’ risk was in IT, as an inefficient IT system will bog down vital aspects of council work.
Council culture as an organisation
In the same meeting, council internal culture – including recruitment and staff morale – was also discussed.
When it came to representation of Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people, Cllr Mann was among those councillors who expressed concerns.
“I’m very concerned we’re taking a backward step,” she said. “If you look at the leadership team, we don’t have any [BAME people].”
The committee was told work was underway to make sure the council’s recruitment partners were working to ensure a ‘diverse shortlist’ of candidates for roles.
Councillors heard that staff morale in general is ‘low at the moment’, with some people feeling overworked.
Slough Children First
Discussing children’s services in Slough, concerns were raised over a lack of data on improvement, making it hard for the council to do effective scrutiny.
The councillors were looking at a review of workforce strategy business case for Slough Children First (SCF).
This set out progress on certain recommendations for SCF, such as exploring opportunities to extend the education and employment support to children in need.
On multiple recommendations, the report read that ‘satisfactory progress had been made.’
Among those with questions was Cllr Christine Hulme (Lab, Herschel Park), who previously held the brief for children’s services under the former Labour administration.
She said it would be hard for councillors to give an opinion when it does not have the information it needs to determine if improvements have been made.
“Who decided it’s ‘satisfactory?’” she asked.
“If you’re going to present us with a report, at least give us something to scrutinise, as opposed to marking your own homework and telling us it’s all satisfactory.”
