Reform no-show leaves county councillors in dark over audit

Members of KCC watchdog vexed by failure of cabinet members to attend key meeting

It’s behind you…how no-show Reform UK failed to find anyone to answer questions about its accounts.

It being the pantomime season, it was perhaps inevitable that ruling county councillors from the Reform administration got themselves in a tangle over the authority’s accounts recently.

The county council, like every other authority, is required to submit their accounts on a yearly basis. This lengthy document sets out how it has managed to balance the books and highlights where it has spent taxpayers’ money - matters which in these days of financial austerity are rather significant.

And the publication of this report is generally held to be one of the most important for the county council. It is not just that it is an independent view of the financial situation over the year but that it accords with the need for transparency and checks and balances.

However, there was a rather “epic fail” over the most recent accounts which bordered on farce when they were presented to a a cross-party committee last week.

While the accounts were published and made available, no-one from Reform was similarly available to answer questions from the committee about how a £1.2bn budget was spent.

The Reform party appeared to have forgotten that it should have someone who is responsible for scrutiny of the report by the all-purpose Governance and Audit Committee.

The purpose of this committee is to provide independent and high-level focus on the adequacy of governance, risk, finance, and control arrangements.

The absence of anyone from the cabinet to take questions inevitably led to questions from opposition groups.

Green county councillor Mark Hood described the situation as “highly irregular” and suggested that the committee wait until someone was available. Which they did.

Tory group leader Harry Rayner was underwhelmed to say the least and he had a list of issues he wanted to address. He brusquely set about a litany of complaints, telling the committee it was “totally unacceptable” and that you could not have a meeting about auditing the accounts without the cabinet member for finance present or someone else in their place.

There followed a stand-off and the meeting hastily adjourned while someone from the Reform group was found to field questions.

The unlucky councillor was Brian Collins, who is the deputy finance spokesman and reluctantly put his head above the parapet to take on the interrogators.

He did at least apologise for the confusion and said that he had inquired the night before if he was needed and told he was not - only for that instruction to be rescinded.

Not that he was going to divulge anything, telling the committee he had really only come to observe.

As arguably the most important financial report concerning the capacity and the challenges KCC confronts as it marches towards a new future, a detailed analysis of the financial landscape ought to have been given careful consideration.

But as we are constantly reminded, Reform does things differently - though not always better.