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Barnsley Officers Flying High

Don’t for a minute think that the hard working officers of Barnsley MBC spend all their time in the confines of their own town. There’s business to be done abroad, as our breakdown of who-went-where shows.

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City Mayor Choice Cost £170k

The dust has settled and Doncaster is still going to have an elected mayor and Sheffield doesn’t want to chance it. Politicians in

Westminster love to trot out that hackneyed phrase ‘the cost to democracy’. Well, in Sheffield the council has had to shell out over

£170,000 to undertake a referendum that was forced on the city by those same Westminster politicians.

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Puzzle Over Polish Visit

Doncaster Council had to send a senior legal officer to Poland in connection with a child protection case, but the authority will not

explain what the connection is between Doncaster and the case in Poznan. This was one of a number of foreign trips that saw

officers jet out as far as Canada and India.

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Council Forced On Fraud Report

The Information Commissioner has told Sheffield City Council it must make public the report into the £16 million fraud at South Yorkshire trading Standards Unit following an application to him by a member of the Sheffield public who has repeatedly been refused sight of the report. But publication can still be delayed if Sheffield appeals against the decision.

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What Are They Frightened Of?

We should be able to have sight of the Newton Report, the investigation commissioned into how South Yorkshire Trading Standards Unit, believed to be a highly successful and profitable venture, was found to be over £16 million in debt when the man who controlled it suddenly died. But even at this late stage Sheffield and the three other councils that made up the unit could attempt to delay publication. Why?

It was in February 2010 that three businessmen were prosecuted at Sheffield Crown Court by the Serious Fraud Office and the chief executive of Sheffield City Council, John Mothersole, promised the report commissioned in 2006 by former CEO Sir Bob Kerslake would be published that summer.

Two years on and we have the Information Commissioner ordering the report be made public. But still Sheffield – and the other three councils – may launch a joint appeal to prevent publication.

The councils are falling out over who pays what towards the £13m-plus that was owed when the fraud was discovered, assets sold and a debt left on the books. We can understand that, but we fail to understand what can be in the report that would influence any legal proceedings between the councils. If Sheffield got it wrong and the report says so, what’s the problem with the authority acknowledging that?

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