Chris Caswill

The Wiltshire Council Audit Committee has just been presented with a damning report of the old County Council finances by external auditors KPMG.  They found ten significant errors in the draft accounts presented to them in July, one alone involving £42 million of errors.  Other errors include including grant income before any claim had been submitted and double counting of assets.  KMPG say that “the draft accounts were of poor quality ..and incomplete”, and have made 19 heavyweight, detailed recommendations for urgent improvement in the financial management of the local authority.  Council officers have managed to put right most of the mistakes, under the guidance of KPMG, but as of today several significant problems remain unresolved and the accounts will not be approved by the external auditors within the published deadline. 

“This is genuinely shocking” says Chippenham Monkton Liberal Democrat Councillor Chris Caswill, “I defy anyone to read the KPMG report and not be shocked by it, even amazed.  The Conservative leadership of the new Council, which is broadly the same as the leadership of the old County Council, has some big questions to answer about how the Council and its predecessor got into this mess with taxpayers money. We will be looking for answers in the weeks and months ahead.”  

The KPMG report to the Audit Committee can be found on the Council’s web site at :

http://194.72.162.210/documents/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-22958/Item_No.08_%28a%29_-_Report_to_those_charged_with_governance_-_Audit_of_the_County_Council%27s_accounts.pdf

The new Wiltshire Council is grappling with a projected £3.8 million overspend in the current year, only months after declaring that it had achieved its target of making £18 million of savings in the transition from the old District & County Council system.  All is not well in the Trowbridge offices.  The IT implementation is late, half the IT staff  have not been appointed, five separate computer systems are still running…..More Council Tax rises on the way?   

Its official.  The Council’s ’preferred option’ for the extra houses around Chippenham is to develop the land on the east of the town,  across the river, including the flood plain.  They propose to allow around 3000 houses to be built there.  This option (and others, including building to the south of the town) will go out to public consultation between October and December.  Chris has challenged the officers to explain how they came to this conclusion, and has asked the Council’s Conservative leadership for assurances that the fact that they own a large chunk of this land will not influence their decision.  “There is an obvious risk of a conflict of interest here”, he argues.  If you are concerned by these proposals, Chris would like to hear from you.  More on this soon on this site. 

Those who are concerned about the upcoming plans for 5500 more houses around Chippenham may want to connect with the ‘Save Our Green Spaces’ community alliance.  Details on their web site :

 http://www.saveourgreenspaces.org/

There was a Town Council by election yesterday in the Park ward in Chippenham, which is the area around John Coles Park, the football ground and Malmesbury and Park Roads.  The result was :

Peter Hutton (Conservative)                   :   216

Lorraine Roberts-Rance  (Lib Dem)       :    427

Elsewhere the Lib Dems also won town council by elections in Melksham and Wootton Bassett. The Conservatives won a town council by-election in Calne but lost the Southwick (Trowbridge) Wiltshire Council seat to an Independent.  

Wiltshire Council is gearing up to produce proposals for locating five and a half thousand new houses around Chippenham.  It’s a  poorly kept secret that some council planning officers see the east of Chippenham, across the River Avon from Riverside Drive and Monkton Park, as the preferred option.  The Council owns a large chunk of that land and would be a major beneficiary of a decision to build there.  Chris will be asking the Council’s Conservative leadership how an impartial decision can be taken about the location when the Council will benefit financially from development of some locations but not from others.  

Chris would anyway like to see the decisions postponed till after the upcoming General Election, as a change of government would probably see the end of the requirement for 5500 new houses around the town.  “We should be left to decide on how best to meet our housing needs without these ill-considered targets being imposed by central government”, Chris argues.