Meeting documents
Cabinet
Wednesday, 15th January, 2003
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Bath & North East Somerset Council |
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MEETING: |
Council Executive Meeting |
AGENDA |
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MEETING DATE: |
15th January 2003 |
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TITLE: |
District Auditor's Decision on Objection to Sale of Open Space |
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WARD: |
All |
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AN OPEN PUBLIC ITEM |
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List of attachments to this report:- Decision of District Auditor and Statement of Reasons, 29th September 2002 |
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1 THE ISSUE
1.1 To enable the Council to consider the decision of the District Auditor and the advice of Eversheds, the Council's retained Solicitors
2 RECOMMENDATIONS
2.1 That the Council consider the decision and advice and determine the action, if any, to be taken.
3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
3.1 There are no specific financial implications arising from this report.
4 THE REPORT
4.1 As a result of allegations of wilful misconduct against two senior (and one former senior) officer of the Council it was considered that they should be removed (so far as practicable) from correspondence with the District Auditor and appointed solicitors (Eversheds). I was therefore appointed as an independent intermediary to supervise the liaison between the Council and Eversheds.
4.2 The District Auditor has now reached his decision, and I have liaised with Eversheds to secure their comments and advice. These are attached. In short the District Auditor found that the sale of a small part of the land comprised in the transfer of housing stock to SOMER was unlawful, but that there had been no misconduct, let alone wilful misconduct, and no loss to the Council. He does not propose to take any further action
4.3 The unlawfulness found was that the land was open space and the Council had disposed it without advertising its intention to do so and considering objections. Shortly after the objection was received, the Council, on the advice of its monitoring officer, put in place arrangements to ensure that such land would not be further disposed of without going through those procedures, so that the statutory purpose, and the interest of the public, was secured.
5 REPORT OF MONITORING OFFICER
5.1 In view of the fact that the District Auditor has identified that the way in which the Council disposed of certain of the Housing Transfer was unlawful, it is necessary for the Solicitor to the Council, as Monitoring Officer, to formally report to the Council Executive in pursuant of his duties under Section 5 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989.
5.2 In fact, the Solicitor to the Council has already drawn the Full Council's attention to the issues the subject of the District Auditor's finding as far back as May 2000 when he put a report to the Full Council indicating his views on the position and recommending action to address the issues raised. He does not consider that any further action is required as a result of the receipt of the District Auditor's Statement of Reasons.
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Report Author |
Robert Divine, Independent Consultant Vernon Hitchman, Solicitor to the Council and Monitoring Officer |
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Background papers |
None. |
Printed on recycled paper
Rep Objections to Council's Accounts.doc (vfh)