Nottingham councillor who had a 'personal connection' with funded group
An inquiry by the District Auditor has concluded a £12 million jobs fund for Nottingham was badly mismanaged. Today we focus on the £1.5 million Community Programme which was part of the scheme and aimed to create 600 volunteer placements. Charles Walker reports...
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Portfolio holder: Councillor Hassan Ahmed.
WHEN £1.5 million of public money was made available to community organisations in Nottingham to fund volunteer placements, there was immediate interest.
The cash was offered through One Nottingham and the city council was involved in setting up the scheme.
Initially, it was hoped there would be no need for organisations to compete for funding. But it quickly became apparent there were more bids than contracts and not enough money to go round.
Groups had to tender applications for funding, which were assessed by an independent panel. But the District Auditor has criticised the way the money was given out.
In a report leaked to the Post, the auditor says:
The council changed the way the competition process worked after bidders applied for funding in breach of its own rules. This led to two additional organisations being handed contracts.
The councillor responsible for the scheme, Hassan Ahmed, had a "personal connection" to one of those organisations, Community Learning Network, which was awarded a contract worth £15,000, later reduced to £12,500
Mr Ahmed took part in discussions about funding CLN with council officers and there is no record of him declaring this personal connection in the meeting.
A direct cash payment for the £12,500 was made to CLN in breach of the council's financial regulations because it was unauthorised and it was made to a partner organisation.
The District Auditor said her concerns arose "from the need for transparency and good corporate governance rather than the inappropriate allocation of contracts (in relation to which I did not find any actual evidence)."
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by starving
Sunday, March 04 2012, 7:54PM
“There goes Neo again . . . He appears to be setting himself up as a City Council Apologist.
Attempting as usual to deflect the debate and label others as stupid.
I reckon he would have some complainants send to mental homes if he was in power . . .”
by mof_gedling
Thursday, March 01 2012, 11:54PM
“what i would like to know is this
if this scheme was a great success where are the facts and figures to show exactly who benefited ?how many people were taken on after completing training ?, i have read in the past where city council takes all the dough to train up school leavers but this time it seems they splashed the cash around to snouts in other troughs,
surely there must be a breakdown of who got what job and at what expense ?”
by Ted_Notts
Thursday, March 01 2012, 9:15PM
“Apparently £12,500 is small change to some people. It must be very pleasant to be able to disregard such sums.”
by ncclols
Thursday, March 01 2012, 9:06PM
“Thank you for your concern neomad. I'm constantly heartened by the number of people anonymously advising me I should stop writing the blog but I'm quite happy with my niche. Rest assured that, when the absolute accuracy of facts is material they are not only researched but linked so people can make up their own minds. My point didn't rely on whether NCC was EXACTLY the largest employer or not. And it was the District Auditor who told me that overall expenditure was around £1bn, I didn't think to check at the time but if it is 'only' £600m I'm sure that makes all the difference.”
by Neo_MadBadger
Thursday, March 01 2012, 8:35PM
“Don't sell yourself short there, you could join the hundreds of people investigating big business and banks. It would mean putting the hobby-horse out to grass though. Of course, nothing I've read on the internet indicates that NCC's expenditure is £1bn, more like £600m. And is NCC the employer with the largest number of staff or is it 'near enough'? if you are going to carry on your one-person crusade against NCC, you might want to get your facts straight before committing finger to keyboard. otherwise it just appears that you are for personal reasons rather single-minded and dare I say it, obsessive.”
by ncclols
Thursday, March 01 2012, 8:00PM
“Hopefully this will work
https://twitter.com/cllrjoncollins/statuses/175271267325321216
Neo_Mad, I'm quite happy to let the hundreds of others already investigating big business and the banks get on with it. Very few people take any interest in local politics and that needs to change. NCC is the biggest employer in Nottm, near enough and has annual expenditure of over £1bn.
And most importantly, when money is diverted away from its intended purpose by dodgy geezers it tends to really matter.”
by Neo_MadBadger
Thursday, March 01 2012, 7:59PM
“wortho is right. I doubt that one out of ten people in, say, Newcastle would know who the leader of NCC is, let alone his deputies. Nor who was the council leader or his deputies in any of the random years that wortho is mentioning. They might know who their local councillors are though. i like your mix of verb tenses though. It reveals an awful lot about you.”
by kumkwat
Thursday, March 01 2012, 7:40PM
“https://twitter.com/#!/cllrjoncollins”
by wortho48
Thursday, March 01 2012, 7:33PM
“You are right Grizzlybear the electorate are like Lambs to the slaughter they do not see any further than their nose ends in fact if you stopped and asked 10 people in the street who was the leader of Nottingham City Council and who were his deputies they would not be able to tell you let alone who are their local councillors .”
by kpi99
Thursday, March 01 2012, 7:29PM
“I cannot see Joco's personal attack on twitter.”