Auditors blame Tees Valley Combined Authority "weaknesses" for inability to complete audit
Plus: Farewell to the Tees Flex
Talk about hubris. After making a grand return to The Teesside Lead, I was struck down last week by whatever’s going around at the minute. I spent three days in bed, and as I write this - a full week after the first onset of symptoms - I’m still not back to my best. Better to get it out of the way before Christmas, and all that…
A short mid-week edition for you today. I’ll be back in your inbox on Sunday.
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See you Sunday,
Leigh
🚌 So long to Tees Flex, the on demand bus route which had been a lifeline to elderly people in areas not served well by buses (like East Cleveland), but also a boon to wealthy Stockton couples not wanting to play designated driver on days/nights out.
TVCA’s Cabinet voted to scrap the scheme (which was due to come to an end next year) and use the money on supporting new bus routes instead. Mayor Ben Houchen has long been a supporter of the scheme, and used it to create political hay when the government spending review confirmed the “£1 billion” on transport he had last year. Sadly for him, he was outnumbered, and option of continuing the service £1.55m a year was turned down.
The vote took place two hours into a long-running meeting, meaning two council leaders had already left before the vote took place.
Do you have some time off over Christmas? You may have seen TVCA publishes all of its FOI responses online now (something plenty of other public bodies have done in the name of transparency for years). Scrolling through recently I saw a response which is typical of the authority in how it chooses to interpret questions.
“Can I request the amount of total expenditure of travel, accommodation and expenses for the Mayor’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia?” was the request. The response gave “The total costs for the Mayor”.
The Mayor didn’t travel alone. But the total expense of £1,880.87 isn’t the total cost to the taxpayer, which is clearly what the original question is intending to discover. Plus ça change…
Auditors unable to complete TVCA audit due to “weaknesses”
Tees Valley Combined Authority’s auditors have said that concerns around governance and value for money at the authority remain, despite claims to the contrary.
In a recent meeting of TVCA’s Audit and Governance Committee, a draft report on the current state of the public body’s finances, written by auditors EY, was presented. They said significant improvements since their last recommendations around improving economy and value for money were had not yet been achieved.
“At this stage of the audit,” wrote EY, “we have identified weaknesses that have not enabled us to progress the audit as we initially planned due to the draft financial statements produced by the Authority not being of the required quality.”
The company is currently undertaking its audit of TVCA’s 2024/25 accounts. The accounts for 2023/24 had been disclaimed, meaning no opinion on whether they were accurate was able to be reached, and that has had a knock-on effect onto the latest period.
EY is also highly critical of what it calls the “business as usual” attitude of TVCA in addressing the recommendations of the Tees Valley Review.
They cite a letter written by mayor Ben Houchen to the government in September last year, in which he said: “I am pleased to inform you that this process is now complete and that this response has been unanimously endorsed by all committees and all involved in this process, allowing me to write to you to confirm that the required changes have been made and implemented into our governance system”.
“In our view,” wrote the auditors, “the effective closure by the Authority of its Action Plan after 6 months is indicative that the Authority may not have fully embedded the required improvements in its governance structures and processes and there is therefore an increased risk that such changes will not have the lasting impact they were intended to achieve.”
In attempting to measure the effectiveness of its current audit, EY uses a traffic light system to measure eight different fields, including the timeliness of delivery of statements from TVCA as well as their accuracy. Of the eight, five are red (“ineffective”), while another two “require improvement”. Only the timeliness of draft financial statements got a green mark, but the auditor says that was at the expense of their accuracy.
The auditor’s final report on the 2024/25 accounts will be presented to the Audit and Governance Committee’s February meeting.