Cheshire East is to tighten up its control measures following a failure in a number of areas – including staff buying goods on purchase cards without providing receipts or invoices.

Each year internal audit is required to form an annual opinion on the adequacy and effectiveness of the council's internal control environment.

This year that opinion has been downgraded to 'limited'.

The 'scale' ranges from good to satisfactory to limited and then no assurance.

One of the issues picked up by councillors at today's (Monday) meeting of the audit and governance committee was the practice of buying goods on purchase cards without staff providing the relevant receipts or invoices.

There was no suggestion of misuse of the cards.

But the practice appeared to be common-place across the council and had been uncovered during the internal audit review in children's services, adults and health, corporate services and the place directorate.

Committee members today demanded to know how this could have been allowed.

Cllr Chris Hilliard (Wilmslow, Ind) said: "I have that cultural thing that I always bring back receipts.

"And in my work, when I'm in the bike shop and I'm taking a parcel to the post office, we bring back receipts. We monitor that.

"I'm concerned that this is across quite a wide range of the council that we don't have that culture. So is this something that we need to work on as a council culture?"

Interim director of finance Adele Taylor said: "I absolutely agree with you on the culture piece.

"I have an absolute hatred for purchase cards and I want to minimise the use to only those areas that are absolutely, strictly necessary."

She said that was a personal view she had held for many years and stressed she was not saying the cards were being misused.

She added: "I've had a couple of other instances where people were expecting things to be reimbursed and not provided me with a receipt, and I will not sign it off and we need to have that same culture across absolutely everything we do."

The finance boss said it was important to remind people 'this is public money we are spending, therefore we should be providing all of that solid evidence, and we need to do that in everything we do'.

Co-opted committee member Ron Jones said: "With regards to purchase cards, it's a simple procedure.

"It's enforced, presumably by line management, sort of the middle level.

"Why aren't they asking the users of those cards to provide information, or their explanations as to why they can't?"

He said the council had lost three senior managers in the last 12 months and had an unsatisfactory report from Ofsted.

"My concerns were being raised about a cultural issue. Have we got a grip on this?" he asked.

Committee vice chair Ken Edwards (Bollington, Lab) said: "There is no doubt about it, this report from internal audit is mighty disappointing and disturbing.

"The judgement is limited. Now the judgement is limited because we see control processes either not there at all … and then we have processes that are not being implemented properly, so the control isn't there.

"Now, both of those are concerning."

Ms Taylor said extra measures had been put in place where any issues had been identified and these were being monitored.

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