A Liberal Democrat councillor has renewed a demand for an independent forensic investigation into The Bridge NDC Accounts.

Lib Dem Deputy Leader Wayne Hoban has been looking into serious allegations which suggest that the £50 million New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration project in Seven Sisters ward in Tottenham has not been appropriately managed by Labour-run Haringey Council.

Cllr Hoban has repeatedly asked both The Bridge NDC Director and Haringey Council to provide him with copies of audited accounts and auditor’s notes for the five year period from 2001 to 2005 – during which the project has been running – but has repeatedly been informed that no specific accounts are available.

Although Cllr Hoban’s request for an independent forensic investigation has been refused so far, he has renewed his demand. The move follows a recent press report (Metro, 6 th December 2006), which reported that a Walsall Council employee who worked for the regeneration team in Walsallwas sacked for revealing how millions of pounds of taxpayers money had been misspent. The employee won £650,000 for unfair dismissal from an employment tribunal after being sacked for revealing that a £50,000 grant had been wrongly paid, £100,000 had been used to balance the books of Walsall Social Services and also that an £850,000 payment ‘could not be accounted for’ during an audit.

Cllr Hoban states: “It is clear that many of the now proven allegations made about poor financial management and inappropriate spending of regeneration monies in Walsall were initially similar to concerns raised about Haringey’s NDC regeneration scheme. It has now been confirmed that large sums of regeneration monies has been has been misspent by another council. Haringey residents need to be reassured that allegations about similar financial mismanagement of The Bridge NDC regeneration spending programme are unfounded. In the absence of any properly audited NDC accounts, an independent financial audit of the accounts is essential to restore confidence in this multi-million pound project.”

Cllr Hoban further states: “In view of reported problems with the Walsall Council regeneration project, I have again written to the Haringey Council Chief Executive and the District Auditor to ask them to support my call for an independent forensic audit investigation of The Bridge NDC accounts.”