The working party looking at the Council’s investments in Icelandic banks has until this evening been an example of good scrutiny. This evening the draft report was being considered by the full scrutiny committee and Tory councillors were clearly under orders to water the report down, push the blame entirely onto the officers for the failure to follow the treasury management strategy and absolve the leader and chair of the Cabinet Resources Committee from any blame what so ever. They also tried to implicate the audit committee who in fact …

On the 28th October last year a report was produced called ‘Council deposits in Icelandic banks – Supplementary report’. The report was a report of the the Leader and Cabinet member for resources who is of course Mike Freer. The report is exempt which means that I cannot tell you what is in it. However I can tell you that it was the information contained in this report that alerted the working party on Icelandic banks that the treasury team had not followed their own strategy.
Given that it was very …

The value of good scrutiny made itself evident this week. I am part of a scrutiny committee working party looking at the council’s decision to invest in Icelandic banks. The working party interviewed officers and Cllr’s about their role in the decisions that led to those investments. We also looked at all the reports that have been produced to date both public and exempt.
It quickly became clear that something was wrong with the way the treasury management team had followed the treasury management strategy. Quite simply they hadn’t followed …