Westmorland and Furness Council Confirm Errors in Published Spending Reports

A clear message has been sent to Westmorland and Furness Council that they are under microscopic scrutiny.

A few weeks ago I questioned the leader of Westmorland and Furness council on its failure to publish legally required transparency data on the councils spending of public money.

24 hours before the meeting the council began to publish that data.

However the council thinking it was getting one over on the scrutiny questioning if it’s failures scored an own goal as the data revealed in the councils public spending accounts report that Westmorland and Furness Council was paying over £70,000 in just 3 months to a Ltd company that was dissolved in January 2019.

The council has now after investigating confirmed that the councils published public spending report contained invalid data and that the company listed was not the company the council had in fact paid money to.

So the Westmorland and Furness Council published transparency reports on public spending are factually inaccurate and not a true representation of the council’s spending.

The assistant director of Finance at the council has today confirmed the misreported information and the actual company the council paid and that steps to correct errors in the councils accounts reporting have been made to reflect the correct information.