Question
I have grave concerns about how finances at Wokingham Borough Council have been managed over the last 12 months or so.
Do you think it is appropriate for a Council that is under financial pressure to have used an open ended contract which included no specific financial figures, to have forgotten the end date of a contract and continued to send/receive invoices for up to 6 months, to have used Section 106 monies which were destined for one part of the Borough (e.g. the Northern Parishes and used elsewhere in the Borough e.g. in Wokingham) without any reference to anyone and to have produced businesses cases which included inaccurate and incomplete information simply to make their case look better than it was?
Minutes:
I have grave concerns about how finances at Wokingham Borough Council have been managed over the last 12 months or so.
Do you think it is appropriate for a Council that is under financial pressure to have used an open ended contract which included no specific financial figures, to have forgotten the end date of a contract and continued to send/receive invoices for up to 6 months, to have used Section 106 monies which were destined for one part of the Borough (e.g. the northern parishes and used elsewhere in the Borough e.g. in Wokingham) without any reference to anyone and to have produced business cases which included inaccurate and incomplete information simply to make their case look better than it was?
Answer
Could I please ask Councillor Ferris to clarify which contract he is referring to so that I can give an accurate and specific answer?
Supplementary Question
My question related to a number of contracts including the joint Wokingham Borough Council/Wokingham Town Council contract covering the recent Market Place refurbishment. So my question is: “Can you confirm how much of the contingency, above the £3.8m originally allocated to the project, has already been used by each Council?”
Supplementary Answer
I can answer part of the question but will have to give you a written answer about the contingency amounts. In terms of the two Councils, Wokingham Borough Council and Wokingham Town Council, who, as you know, have been working together collaboratively in partnership since 2016 with a view to implementing the Vision of creating high quality public realm, as set out in the Town Centre Masterplan.
This has been produced through a process to deliver a high quality piece of public realm, albeit following delays which were largely due to ground conditions. The scheme was based on the extensive public participation in preparing relevant documents and policies, all of which were funded by developer contributions. The contract was with Balfour Beatty and it was an NEC engineering and construction contract based upon the standard template for this type of work. It contained both an end date and an agreed price so I am not sure about the source of your comment about the contract being open ended in your question, as now I know it relates to that.
With regard to the S106 monies, any such strategic contributions to facilities available to all residents of the Borough are legitimately spent in accordance with the relevant agreements for the purposes to which the money was allocated. This is the case in respect of the agreements to which, I believe, you refer. Allocation was made through our business as usual procedures. We allocate S106 contributions to the key priorities of the Council as set out in the Capital Programme.
Previously, a number of the contributions I believe you are referring to were allocated to the Twyford Station Masterplan project but, unfortunately, as I am sure you know, this project was not ready to progress. Due to the end dates on these developer contributions expiring, these allocated funds would have ended up going back to the developer if they had not been used. So, this time, it was agreed that the developer funds would be put towards the Wokingham town centre regeneration project. In this instance, I hope you will agree that this was a good use of the money and that this was reasonable financial management rather than simply handing the money back to the developer.