Barnet panned over £1.4m contract fiasco
Barnet LBC failed to comply with its own rules when handing out a million pound contract exposing the council to ‘significant financial and reputational risk’, according to the council’s audit committee.
The damning report said no procurement exercise was undertaken to appoint security firm, Metpro, for which the council has paid £1.4m over five years, and that “officers cannot …give assurances that this will not happen again”.
It said: “The council has failed to comply with its Contract Procedure Rules (CPR) and financial regulations, exposing the council to significant reputational and financial risks.
“No procurement exercise had been undertaken to appoint MetPro, in accordance with the council’s CPR.
“No written contract between the council and MetPro could be found. There is no record of an approval and authorisation for the use of MetPro for providing security services.
“Although we cannot rule out fraud, there have been no allegations of fraud and there is no evidence to suggest that there should be a fraud investigation.”
The council is currently in the process of tendering for contracts for its back office services and regulatory services collectively worth over half a billion pounds – see LGC tomorrow for more.
The report follows media reports last month that Metpro was to be investigated by a government watchdog after it emerged that it was not properly licensed.
Barnet cabinet member for resources and performance Daniel Thomas (Con) said: “Contract management is an area we need to tighten up on which is exactly why we have this report. We now need to put in place a clear programme of improvement to match those we ran in these other services.”