My thanks to a loyal reader who has nominated Morley Town Council for my prestigious, and internationally renowned "Prats of The Week" Award.For why?
Well, let him explain in his own words:
"Morley Town Council have just published their annual report for 2010 and the balance sheet doesn't balance.
Why not?
Because they have hidden bits of it.
Worried about the consequences of revealing a confidential compromise settlement with the former Town Clerk after losing a tribunal, they decided that they would create a bit of Accountancy history - by publishing their balance sheet without a balance.
Already a laughing stock in rapidly spreading beancounter circles, the Audit Commission isn't overly impressed either. They described it as "unusual" and have fired a shot across the bows with this rather ominous remark:
'One would hope, however, that any financial information presented in an annual report would be both complete and consistent with the audited statutory accounts of the body.'
By September 30th, the council will have to reveal these numbers they are hiding, when they publish the audited accounts.
So why delay the inevitable?
Eventually, one concerned citizen (me) took a trip to the local library and found the figures in amongst old agendas & annual reports. They had been approved in open session back in May!
By their cack-handed handling of this the council have drawn more attention to themselves, and the issue is the talk of the Facebook Morley message boards.
There remains a big question about which side wanted confidentiality and why - something they are keeping very quiet on.
But can a public body use confidentiality to hide what may be very poor decisions?
Not for ever!
The Town Council is ran by a strange collective of independents who formed their own party, the Morley Borough Independents. (There is one British Nasty party member, but she has been successfully frozen out by them refusing to second her onto any committees). Morley's six City Council Members are also MBIs on the Town council but their influence in Leeds varies with whatever the latest power struggle is in a Council with a very tiny party majority."
Morley Town Council, well deserving Prats of The Week!
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I wonder whether Morley Town Council have received their training at the E.E.C School of Accountancy? Their efficiency, and their methods employed seem remarkably similar!
ReplyDeleteTo err is human; to really cock up you need a council.
ReplyDeleteHi-Viz; Just laugh at it.
can we go and smash up all the councils yet?
ReplyDeleteplease ............ ?
So they are also anti-democratic,having "successfully frozen out" a legally elected representative,and those that voted for her are unrepresented,nice going,why worry about accounting when you seem to have disposed of democracy completely.
ReplyDeleteOur council recently sent out an end-of-financial-year report to everyone in their catchment area, highlighting their achievements for the year. Reading it was a semi-surreal experience. Going down the list, the achievements became more and more tenuous. For one item the only achievement to report was: “A meeting was held”.
ReplyDeleteIt's not in dispute that holding a meeting is an achievement (agreeing slots in everyone's diaries, booking the room, ordering the coffees, agreeing the minutes from the last time ...) but does it mean that holding 10 meetings would result in 10 times the achievement? Or is it possible that holding zero meetings would have provided greater overall benefit?
What they don't realise is that digging a hole is an achievement, and filling it in again is an achievement, but putting the two together doesn't guarantee benefit.
In the private sector things are much simpler. The issue is: can we delight our customers sufficiently such that they keep coming back to consume more of our services with the result that the company stays solvent and people remain gainfully employed.
In the public sector that connection doesn't exist. The sad fact is that council jobs are usually sustained by threatening the end user rather than delighting the end user. While that remains the case, councils at least need to realise that the end user will be more interested in verified benefits rather than achievements.
Moving on to more important matters.
ReplyDeleteI would just like to thank everyone involved in organising the racing at Kempton tonight.
In particular for taking the time to check before the start of the 21:10, that Sweet Secret was not blindfolded, gagged or otherwise impeded.
You set a shining example for others to follow!