Spotlight

‘Potless’ Potto

Nigel July 7, 2024 Potto

‘Potless’ Potto

– an “In My View” article by NIGEL WARD, investigating the ever-increasing (and entirely accurately calculated) additional Audit Investigation Fees incurred by Potto Parish Council (as per FOIA), due to its ongoing refusal to address its many ‘weaknesses’ (Audit-speak for failures).

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Regular readers will be aware that I have been investigating Potto Parish Council, led by (unelected chair) Andrew WILDE with his untrained daughter, Mrs Joanne STOREY, as (very) part-time Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer (RFO), for some years:

http://nyenquirer.uk/category/towns-parishes/potto/

My investigation work for this article was initially frustrated by the Council’s refusal to publish the latest audit report dated 30 May 2024 [link], as required by law. On 14th June I sent a Freedom of Information Request for this audit report and the accompanying invoice [link], but the Council didn’t respond until 3rd July.

This present article focuses upon the current Audit Fee – it is £12,797.70. At first sight, this fee may appear not to be hugely significant in terms of local government wastage, but it certainly is when Potto Council’s entire Annual Budget for 2022/23 is taken into consideration.

Its entire budget for 2022/23 was £7,500, so the Audit Fee amounts to over 170% of its total annual income.

The Council’s recent bank balances (reference the May 2024 meeting Minutes) are published as:

Based upon the leadership skills of unelected Chairman Councillor Andrew WILDE and the financial acumen of his daughter, Clerk/RFO Joanne Storey, it would appear that Potto Parish Council is well and truly BUST.

What on earth is going so catastrophically wrong at Potto Parish Council?

I have investigated the history of additional Audit Fees, incurred as a result of persistent and repeated Audit Investigations into the Council’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge or address its many problems – problems that infest every aspect of the Council’s sphere of business.

Starting in 2014/15, the year of Potto Parish Council’s first Audit Investigation, the Investigation Fees were £5,365.12 inc VAT (all Fees shown here include the VAT).

The Fee for the next year’s investigation (2015/16) was £4,703.87, running total = £10,068.99.

Then came a Public Interest Report (PIR) covering four years of Annual Accounts, with annual Fees of £7,197.44 (2016/17), £7,400.18 (2017/18), £8,718.04 (2018/19) and £9,731.76 (2019/20) respectively, which totals £33,047.42, making a running total of £43,116.41.

Potto Parish Council erroneously recorded, in its Minutes for the 7th September 2022 PIR meeting, that the Audit Fees for the PIR totalled £37,102.37. Perhaps the WILDE’s are innumerate?

It should be noted, for transparency, that Potto Parish Council’s share of these four PIR fees was reduced by a reported 70% ‘bail-out’ from the Smaller Authorities Audit Appopintments Ltd (SAAA), as WILDE had asserted the Council was unable to pay the full Audit Fees. This assertion was entirely untrue since, whilst the Council’s immediate cash reserves were insufficient, the Council is the Registered Title holder of the Village Hall and therefore it could easily have secured a loan to pay the Audit Fee in full.

The next Annnual Accounts for which I can locate Investigation Fees after the PIR (2021/22) was £4,054.90. Our running total now stands at £47,171.31.

We now arrive at the Audit Fee for last year (2022/23), issued to Potto Parish Council on 30th May 2024, to wit: £12,797.70.

I’ve added these additional Audit Fees up and the total to date is a whopping running total of £59,969.01 – a massive SIXTY GRAND – or exactly EIGHT TIMES the Council’s annual Precept! This proportion of Fees-to-Precept is really a quite outrageous indictment of WILDE’s astonishing incompetence in allowing a tiny Parish Council, with only about 120 Council Tax-paying households, to shoulder the monumental burden of an additional and unnecessary SIXTY GRAND. Small wonder that residents are in sheer disbelief!

Bear in mind that these are additional Fees, on top of the standard rate of service charges.

In my first investigation of Potto Parish Council http://nyenquirer.uk/worst-parish-council/, published on 29th November 2022, I suggested that Potto Parish Council was ‘arguably the worst parish council in England’. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I would contend that subsequent effects have shown that I was absolutely right.

And yet, shockingly, the WILDEs are still refusing to acknowledge a milligram of responsibility. They are still blaming everyone else for the chaos they have contrived to create. They have not acknowledged or corrected any of a myriad of ‘weaknesses’. I can find no record anywhere in the Minutes in which the Council has contacted the Yorkshire Local Councils Associations YLCA – the Council’s paid technical advisors – and asked for, or received, any help or support about how to address its many problems. Indeed, the reverse is true. The Council ‘disagrees’ with the advice received from YLCA. The Minutes state:

I also remember the wise words recorded by Upper Tribunal Judge WIKELEY in January 2024, as he dismissed Potto Parish Council’s Application for Permission to Appeal – he stated there are “fundamental misunderstandings” at Potto Parish Council. Not ‘alf! Perhaps he really meant wilful disobediance.

But whilst true, I suggest that it is a humungous understatement. Potto Parish Council, with its untrained Councillors, unelected Chair and a part-time untrained Clerk/RFO, is actually arguing the toss with the YLCA, which has a wealth of experience in local government administration and full-time professional trained legal experts.

Readers are left to form an opinion as to who is best to be trusted.

Meanwhile, the Chair’s Report, dated 2023, states that the Council is going great guns; excerpt below:

The annual Chair’s Report highlights start with a wooden bench seat and some tree planting – and “that’s all she wrote”. Diddly squat. For this utterly trivial irrelevance, the Council has incurred an Audit Fee for the investigation of its maladministration to the tune of £12.8K. More pressing than the bench seat and arboreal intervention is the urgent need to have Potto Parish Council abolished or merged with an adjacent Council.

The Audit Report for 2022/23, which would usually run to only a short paragraph of text, covers no less than SIX pages.

There is a very long list of 9 very detailed ‘Qualifications’ – the most serious type of censure that can be recorded in a standard format Audit Report.

Further, there are 6 ‘Other Matters’ – less serious ‘weaknesses’, but still reprehensible enough to warrant inclusion in some detail in the Audit Report.

I hope to be able to examine some of these ‘Qualifications’ and ‘Other Matters’ in the next chapter of my investigation – watch this space

Meanwhile, I confidently expect yet another Audit Investigation to commence in regard to the Council’s 2023/24 Annual Accounts.