Written 7 January 2012 at 14:06:31; the Nottingham Post articles no longer seem to be available on via the then urls, whilst a critic's articles are.
Second NEP story on Audit Commission report published this morning. Given ... Georgina Culley reads out parts of the report in public, which Charlie Walker witnessed, interesting that that was not used (seems N Post might have to be careful simply repeating AC stuff). Interesting too that it’s on page 5, when Friday’s story was front page. http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Critical-report-published/story-14354464-detail/story.html http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/City-rapped-pound-12m-jobs-fund/story-14344438- detail/story.html Report also refers to Brian Grocock’s case finally coming up. Blogger has posted on this - http://ncclols.blogspot.com/2012/01/grocock-report-published.html Blogger tries to concede some ground before taking against. Blogger also protested about the District Auditor report being kept confidential - http://ncclols.blogspot.com/2012/01/pointless-i-know.html and http://ncclols.blogspot.com/2011/12/shameless-cover-up.html as well as approach to Annual Audit Letter ( http://ncclols.blogspot.com/2011/12/joco-returns-to-fantasy-island.html ) ; and is also critical of District Auditor - http://ncclols.blogspot.com/2012/01/auditor-schmauditor.html - which kinda offers a bit of a summary of all the Council’s financial standards problems. I had some sympathy for the rationale that said, don’t publish, cos there’s likely to be a standards investigation, and it’s more in line with natural justice not to have the press announcing someone guilty before some consideration has been given. However, if Audit Cttee. had not decided to refer to Standards, then we would have been at risk of a new kind of Catch 22 – “You can’t see the report”
“Why not?”
“There’s a catch”
“What’s the catch?”
“It might spoil any investigation into wrong-doing”
“But how do I know if there’s been any wrong-doing?”
“You read the report”
“So can I read the report?”
“No, there might be an investigation”
“So who might prompt the investigation?”
“Anyone who’s read the report”
Thankfully, we were saved from that one by Audit Cttee.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/quotes
... The vote for referral was I understand nem com – one member abstained.
[The] Tories ... raised the matter of the Annual Audit Letter, because it was in the public domain, even though by accident, and were able to debate it in full Council even though Labour members [generally hadn't seen it] ... They then sidetrack any debate on the validity of keeping the report confidential by reading parts of it out anyway, and their actions are referred to in a newspaper article that also quotes the DA as saying she’d prefer to see it in the public domain. ...
Finally, on conduct, there are 2 general sets of principles that are particularly pertinent – The City Council’s constitution - see Part 6 - Codes of Conduct [118kb] and The Nolan Principles - http://www.archive.official- documents.co.uk/document/parlment/nolan/nolan.htm .
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