Jan 2011 31

Welsh Taxpayers in the dark3

The devolved Welsh Assembly Government continues to be lax with accounting for taxpayers’ money. Its flagship ‘Communities First’ programme, designed to aid those in deprived areas, has been caught napping again. After a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, it was discovered that there are a number of significant and inherent failings within the record keeping of its Cardiff Council-based Human Resources department.

Apparently, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have only maintained recruitment costs for their ‘Communities First’ programme since 2005, even though it has been in operation since 2001. That means that four years of spending Welsh Taxpayers’ money has gone unregulated. Nationally, I would not even want to comprehend the amount of Taxpayers’ money outside of Cardiff that has been totally unaccounted for.

On a more damning note, since 2005, a total of £75,648 has been spent by Cardiff Council on recruitment towards their thirty-five member staff team. But within the FOI response, it was highlighted that Cardiff Council when reporting expenditure had not accounted for several elements of recruitment, including interview expenses and Criminal Record Bureau checks, which could account for tens of thousands of pounds more.

A further depressing element to this well-meaning initiative is that the three charitable organisations receiving WAG grants for ‘Communities First’ are not required to forward their expenses onto the Welsh Assembly and only publish results within their annual report. This leaves Welsh Taxpayers totally in the dark about their spending plans and the use of public money.

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  • Tom

    And they are currently holding a referendum on having greater tax raising/wasting powers. I shall pass this info on to all my welsh family and friends, letting them know how incompetant the WAG is (if they didn’t know already).

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  • Nigel

    Communities First has only been in existence in Cardiff since 2004 and a large part of these recruitment costs will have been spent on the need for all job advertisements to be in Welsh as well as English. The three charitable organisations mentioned have only been employers for the programme since about 2008 and so their recruitment costs will be fairly low. The taxpayers alliance is a good organisation and has a valuable purpose as an unofficial watchdog on government spending but unless it produces unbiased accounts of information, it seriously risks jeopardising any integrity that it may have.