At West Suffolk Council’s Performance and Audit Committee, last night, I discovered buried on page 119 of the report, a mention of the council paying money to a fraudster rather than the correct supplier. To my knowledge, and it reaffirms it in the report, this has never happened before at the council.

Clearly, the job of any scrutiny committee is to find out what has happened, what the consequences are and how is it to be prevented for the future. I asked the obvious question “how much was involved”? There was a big discussion about whether this information should be made public or not (of course it should, it’s public money)but thankfully the monitoring officer agreed the figure should be released.

Nowhere in the report did it mention the sum involved. In my minds eye I thought it might be a few hundred pounds. Imaging my shock when I was told it was over fifty thousand pounds!!!!! Every 1% council tax rise = roughly £100k so this represents a half a percent council tax rise. Without me asking the question this would have remained buried. That is not good enough.

I will be asking a lot more questions. Has somebody fallen asleep at the wheel?