News / Watchdog meets to plan SIC probe
THE ACCOUNTS Commission meets tomorrow (Thursday) to decide how it is going to proceed with its investigation into Shetland Islands Council.
The local government watchdog agreed last month to send its Controller of Audit Caroline Gardner to Shetland after concerns were raised about the way the local authority was being run.
SIC chief executive David Clark said yesterday he is expecting auditors to come to Shetland for one week sometime during the next two months.
The visit was planned after a highly critical report from Audit Scotland, which qualified the council’s accounts for the fourth year running and commented on “high profile relationship issues” between councillors and Mr Clark.
Commission chairman John Baillie said he was worried that there may be “deeper problems at the council”.
Now Audit Scotland has produced a scoping report for Ms Gardner’s work in Shetland, which will be discussed at the Commission’ monthly meeting tomorrow.
Yesterday Mr Clark said the council has met with Audit Scotland several times recently and a week long visit had been suggested for the end of February or the first half of March.
“The proposal is that they come on site for one week to do a follow up audit. When that process has been gone through they will produce their report. The whole process is one that we are quite comfortable going through,” he said.
In a separate move SIC convener Sandy Cluness has invited local government umbrella group COSLA to send their Improvement Service to Shetland to help the authority raise its game.
This followed a series of complaints and arguments concerning the treatment of assistant chief executive Willie Shannon, the awarding of the contract to review plans for the Anderson High School and a drinking session at Lerwick Town Hall with Mr Clark and a consultant.
One complaint from six councillors about Mr Clark’s behaviour since his appointment last summer has still to be pursued, despite being submitted six weeks ago. The chief executive yesterday refused to comment on this complaint, but added that did not mean nothing was happening about it.
Representatives of COSLA and the Improvement Service are expected in Shetland next week to start what is “likely to be a reasonable lengthy process” of developing an improvement plan for the SIC.
Mr Clark said he thought the SIC was “nowhere near best practice on performance monitoring”, and he would welcome any assistance in that field.
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