Northumberland’s ‘Black Holes’ Sci-fi or Fact?

 

A couple of weeks ago Northumberland County Council reported to its secret cabinet that the Government had left them with a £12M Black-Hole in their accounts through Covid 19 and then spun that as news out into the local press.

Running stories based on Black-Holes has become a regular feature of the management style adopted by Councillor Oliver of Corbridge who holds the finance portfolio on Northumberland County Councils one party only ‘secret cabinet’. He located his first black hole back in 2017 a few weeks after his Tories took office and began paying handsome sums to officers they thought may not share their loyalty to them and those who may question their newly adopted delivery tea

Councillor Olivers initial black hole wasn’t recorded in the first set of accounts put out from the current Tory regime nor did the external auditor comment on it in his annual report so we need to ask as county Laymen, when does a black hole in the accounts become a recognised black hole and why has the Chairperson of internal audit Councillor Ms Georgina Hill of Berwick not adopted a process for the true recognition of the matter.

The answer to that may lay in the fact that Councillor Ms Hill has been noted in a report by an outgoing Nationally recognised external auditor of running an internal audit committee that does not show any independence from the administration whatsoever.

We will give a couple of examples here:
Councillor Olivers first announced black hole in 2017 was not looked at by Ms. Hills audit committee in any detail as no schedule explaining his accountancy problem was put forward through the internal audit process. Therefore the scrutiny of this item did not take place at committee or through the corporate scrutiny panel of the Council but it was spun out into the mainstream media.

Also the Council through its described non-independence has employed four heads of finance in the last three years of office (a form of tantrum management maybe? ).This has led to possible black holes being missed from Ms Hills agenda such as the dreadful change from successful arms length company ARCH to mediocre Advance Northumberland where the huge costs of change from one to the other were reported by the external auditor but not correctly brought for debate and scrutiny to the internal audit committee by neither the Internal Auditor nor Ms Hills. This could be a correct example of a black hole that was clearly missed through the non-independence of her and her internal audit team and committee.

When coupled with the massive losses made by Advance Northumberland in the last two financial years Councillor’s Oliver and Hills missed three opportunities to report and have recorded true ‘black-holes’ in the accounts but didn’t bother as we laymen suspect they were caused through the political management of the current administration and we can’t have that reported can we?

So back to our original question, when is a black hole a true black hole and when is it just sci-fi. I bet the Government audit office will be checking on Councillor Olivers latest outburst before settling on a figure the Government owes Northumberland as they will not have missed their questionable recent financial history.