Nottinghamshire County Council has been strongly criticised for how it handled the sale of a plot of land.
The land sale has already been investigated by the police, and the independent ombudsman.
The plot, at Sutton-cum-Lound, was sold in March 2016 after an informal tender.
However after this sale, a complainant argued that the sale was so badly handled that the council’s annual accounts were ‘contrary to the law.’
The complaint also said the council had not got the best value for money, because the sale had not been properly tendered, and the council had accepted a lower price than the maximum amount it was offered.
Further, they argued that the person to whom the land was sold was a ‘connected person’ to the council.
As a result of this formal complaint auditors KPMG looked into whether the sale made the accounts unlawful.
Today the findings of the KPMG report have been formally acknowledged by the council, which is now Conservative-controlled, but was run by Labour at the time of the sale.
The report is highly critical of the handling, but stopped short of declaring the accounts unlawful.
The meeting today (Wednesday, March 4) heard that a ‘significant’ number of changes had been put in place to prevent a recurrence, including changes to the constitution, greater scrutiny of sales, and a reduction in the use of temporary staff.
The cost of KPMG’s investigation into the botched sale was £55,000.
The ongoing objection and investigation has meant that the council’s accounts for 2015/16, 2016/17 2017/18 and 2018/19 could not be formally signed off until now.
The auditor’s report found: “There were failings in the council’s arrangements in respect of the process to sell the holding.
“It is arguable that those failings resulted in the council over time receiving a smaller capital receipt for the land than may otherwise have been the case.”
However the report concluded that taking the matter to court was unlikely to be justifiable given the high costs involved.
