Damning internal audit report for 2023-24 Clifford Chambers and Milcote Parish Council finds payments made without authorisation and other concerns

LONG-RUNNING tensions over the state of play at a parish council were due to be in the spotlight at a meeting last Wednesday (17th July).

Concerns over how Clifford Chambers and Milcote Parish Council is run and how it spends its money have been an issue for months.

And a damning internal audit report for 2023-24 - now available on the council website - will no doubt ignite the passions at the meeting that was set to take place at the village hall.

The report was commissioned by the council from an expert based in Hampshire and the substantive report lists a catalogue of failures where the council has not followed procedures in a variety of cases- highlighting major changes that are needed.

In a summary of the report - also available on the website - Tim Light, as the internal auditor says: ‘The parish council does not maintain an adequate system of internal control including measures designed to prevent and detect fraud and corruption or review its effectiveness.

‘There are insufficient internal controls when making BACS payments and there is no approval process to authorise online payments.

‘The parish clerk is making payments under a scheme of delegation that has not been approved by the parish council.

‘The council has not carried out an assessment of the risks or took appropriate steps to manage those risks including the introduction of internal controls during 2023-2024 to ensure that the requirements of the Governance and Accountability for Smaller Authorities in England (March 2023) is met.

‘The parish clerk does not minute or record it carries out regular budgetary control. No evidence was found in the minutes, that records budget monitoring reports are provided to the parish council to assess budget v actual.

‘The clerk should record in the minutes that the Parish Council have received budget monitoring report and agreed action to taken where necessary to ensure that the precept is based on up-to-date and accurate information’.

It added that it does not have systems in place to ensure all its income is collected, with no invoices have been raised for the fees from allotments in 2023-2024.

And it also says the parish council has not followed the requirements of the Transparency Code regulations 2015.

The council discussed the reports into its governance and auditing at an extraordinary meeting on 27th June, with brief minutes showing acceptance of them and recommendations.

The meeting yesterday evening was due to have a public open session ahead of an agenda item on policies and governance, which lists five items and a further section to give an update on finance.

Separately, there was also an item to discuss wheterh mee