My LibDem Haringey Council colleagues show exactly why people in Haringey are angry with the Labour council. As the audit committee report demonstrates in black and white – Haringey Labour are happy to they spend, spend, spend – and pay for their overspending by closing older peoples’ luncheon clubs, children’s centres and swingeing cuts to youth services. Less to do with government reductions – far more to do with being incapable of running a council within its means.

Here is the news release:

A special report released this week shows how Haringey Council continued to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on consultants without adequate, or in many cases any checks on spending, performance or contracts.

The report compiled by Deloitte, which was considered at the Council’s Audit Committee on 19th April 2011, shows that a proper business case for spending on consultants existed for only half of the test cases, half were engaged without a proper contract, only one in ten cases showed any evidence that the Council were monitoring expenditure and in no cases were there any checks on performance.

Liberal Democrats have criticised the lack of control by the Labour Council on its spending and have called for a commitment that this situation is rectified with all existing consultants and all future contracts.

Last month Haringey Liberal Democrats uncovered that since October, when the Council was aware of the scale of the reduction of government grant, it continued to spend £4,800 a day on consultants.

Cllr Robert Gorrie, Haringey Liberal Democrat Leader and Finance Spokesperson, comments:

“At a time when the Labour Council is choosing to close many essential services it is simply unacceptable that so much local taxpayers’ money is being spent in such a reckless fashion without proper controls or even basic performance management.

“This lack of control and potentially profligate spending is entirely symptomatic of a Labour administration who have overspent last years budget by millions and are trying to blame anything but themselves for the problem.”

ENDS

Link to the Audit Committee papers (Appendix A p.6-7)
Linkto a news release sent in March 2011 showing Haringey Council’s spending on consultants since October 2010.
The Labour Council has agreed to use £1.7million of Area Based Grant to fund the £10million overspend in 2010/11. Area Based Grant is meant to support local priorities and has in the past been spent on enterprise projects and tackling worklessness.