Cllr Wayne Hoban, Haringey Lib Dem Spokesperson for Regeneration & Enterprise, slammed the Labour Regeneration and Enterprise Cabinet member at this week’s full council meeting over a damning internal audit report submitted to Haringey Council in September 2006, which highlighted serious management and accountability failings within the Bridge New Deal for Communities £50 million spending programme.

Councillor Hoban has also discovered serious discrepancies relating to statements made by the Bridge NDC Director and the London Region Head of Audit in response to his enquiries.The Bridge NDC Director informed Cllr Hoban in a letter of 26 July 2005 that the NDC accounts are contained within Haringey Council’s accounts, but stated that, “there is no specific line covering the Bridge NDC in the accounts.”The London Region Head of Audit, however, stated in a letter to Cllr Hoban of 19 February 2007 that, “NDC transactions are recorded in Haringey Council’s accounting systems and are separately identifiable”.

The Internal Audit report (the first time the Bridge NDC spending programme had been audited since it commenced in 2001), sampled 10 projects during the course of their audit and found that:

·No Project Proposals were found on file

·None of the projects contained the Project Appraisal for Health Checklists

·Project Appraisal forms were not always signed off by the relevant council officer

·No reconciliation was completed between System K, which records expenditure, output and outcome, and SAP.

Cllr Hoban (Alexandra ward) comments:

“This damning audit demonstrates clearly that Haringey Council, as the Accountable Body for this huge £50 million spending programme, has failed in its responsibility to ensure that expenditure is properly recorded and also ensure that output and outcomes are properly measured and recorded. In the absence of such controls it is impossible to determine whether the money has been appropriately spent and also impossible to determine whether the intended outcomes have been achieved.

“This is clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs; we have clearly contradictory statements from the two key individuals charged with the responsibility for ensuring that this multi-million project has been appropriately spent.This is a clear case of ‘smoke and mirrors’, with precious little clarity and accountability as to the real benefits delivered to local residents on the ground.

“It is clear that nothing less than an independent forensic financial investigation of the NDC accounts for the period 2001-2006 will do if we are to be reassured that the massive public funds secured for the NDC project has been appropriately managed and spent.”