Potto: Another Due Process Failure?
- – an “In My View” article by NIGEL WARD, investigating the apparent failure to uphold due process at CHIPCHASE MANNERS, a firm of chartered accountants based in Middlesbrough and currently employed by Potto Parish Council as its Internal Auditor (following the ‘unexpected’ retirement of the previous incumbent).
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The Internal Audit of Potto Parish Council’s 2023/24 Annual Accounts was carried out by Mr Graeme Richard BOAGEY BA FCA CTA, Managing Partner at Chipchase Manners, following the resignation of the previous internal auditor, who had rebuffed my earlier enquiries with the words:
“I am unable to comment to you on any matters relating to the parish council. As I’m sure you are aware my only obligation is to the parish council.”
Ah, there goes transparency again . . . I was not looking to subvert the man’s ‘obligation’; simply to apprise him of ‘need to know’ information to his own advantage.
So I contacted the incoming Mr BOAGEY by email on 22nd April 2024, to advise him of some of the many weaknesses endemic within the administration of business at Potto Parish Council, so that he was able diligently to investigate these weaknesses and thereby deliver an accurate and appropriately detailed Internal Audit Report, thus securing Potto Parish Council’s duty of accountability to the public.
I suggested that the Public Interest Report (PIR) issued to Potto Parish Council on 21st July 2022 by its External Auditors (PKF LITTLEJOHN LLP), riddled as it is with innumerable instances of the Council’s abject governance failures, was probably a good place to start.
Came neither acknowledgement of, nor response to, my reasonable, courteous and (in fact) helpful ‘heads-up’ email. Not even a ‘thank you’.
For reasons that have now become apparent, Potto Parish Council has for months refused to publish Mr BOAGEY’s Internal Audit Report on its website, along with the AGAR and other required accounting documents. I struggle to resist the suspicion that the ‘directing mind’ at Potto Parish Council is keenly aware that the Council simply bunged Mr BOAGEY around half-a-grand to trot off a meaningless rubber-stamping exercise.
I could be wrong, however, because I see that his Report has finally been published – when everyone has given up looking for it.
Shockingly, apart from a couple of ‘minor peccadilloes’, Mr Graeme Richard BOAGEY, the author of the Report, has given Potto Parish Council a clean bill of health. This contrasts sharply – diametrically, even – with the Smaller Authorities’ Audit Appointments (SAAA) which has been unable to identify even one worse small Council than Potto out of c.10,000 other small authorities in the UK.
Mr BOAGEY’s nine-page Internal Audit Report [link] records that all but one of the fifteen control objectives:
- “has been met”
and that he confidently asserts that:
- “the AGAR can be submitted to the external auditor without amendment”.
This is astonishing – one can only wonder whether or not Mr BOAGEY may have been examining, in error, the Annual Accounts of an entirely different Parish Council, or, indeed, any official document of any substance at all. I suspect that the External Auditor, PKF LITTLEJOHN LLP, is currently grappling with a litany of objections to the AGAR, as Potto Parish Council’s AGAR emphatically should NOT have been submitted to the External Auditor without radical – almost total – amendment. It is, in my view, a parody of accountability.
The Enquirer has recently been contacted by someone who I suspect lives in close enough proximity to Potto and who has tried to contact Mr BOAGEY directly to find out what has gone wrong.
My source tells me that, even after about 10 emails (since early September 2024), Mr BOAGEY has apparently neglected even to acknowledge receipt of those enquiries, much less offer a rationale for the preposterous unbelievability of his Report.
Mr BOAGEY is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England & Wales (ICAEW) – the industry professional body for accountancy – and he has bindingly committed to adhering to the high standards of probity set out by the ICAEW; he must be accountable for his actions and inactions.
I am also aware that a guidance leaflet issued by the National Audit Office (NAO) specifically states that the public are legally entitled to – and indeed morally should – contact their local Internal Auditors where problems such as potential fraud may exist.
But Mr BOAGEY has, quite shamefacedly, ducked this duty for two months – not even acknowledging receipt of statutorily authorised public input.
I sent Mr BOAGEY a pre-publication draft of this article, offering him a ‘Right of Reply’. Mr BOAGEY has, to his credit, provided a ‘read-receipt’.
But, as yet, there has been no substantive response. Should Mr BOAGEY choose to respond, his text will appear below the horizontal line.
“Right of Reply”
Unfortunately, having allowed the press-deadline to pass without response, Mr BOAGEY has clearly declined to offer any explanation or apology to the taxpayers of Potto (or the readership of the North Yorks Enquirer and the wider public), in respect of the obvious scarcity of due diligence invested in his Internal Audit Report for Potto Parish Council, in which he successfully overlooked a massive catalogue of governance compliance failures readily identified by his External Audit counterpart, PKF LITTLEJOHN LLP.
Discussing this case with an old solicitor friend, she asked, “Do you think exposing such poor behaviour really serves much purpose?” I answered, “Surely, the public is entitled to know about one who, in the name of accountability, takes their money – whilst lacking the courage to look them in the eye?” She said, “You mean like a common sneak thief?”
I told her I could not possibly comment.
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