Glasgow council slammed for taking years to carry out overdue tasks recommended by auditors

A number of the actions had original deadlines of 2018 and politicians were not impressed by the delays and the long list of late internal audit actions.

‘Weak’

Councillor Ruairi Kelly worried that a delay to recommendations for dealing with developer contributions could impact cash coming into the council.

Councillor Jill Brown, Labour, branded the council’s excuses for not doing the tasks “weak” at the finance and audit scrutiny committee last week.

She said: “I am concerned about quite how long it takes to close some of these- for matters that on the face of it don’t look like they should take as many years as they do.”

Highlighting how the council had delayed rolling out a system for ordering taxis, she said: “It seems like a very standard, basic but essential requirement to be put in place – the use of a password for ordering a taxi. It is not novel and has been in place for many businesses for a very long time. The justification for not having done that so far seems to be COP26.”

She added: “Some of these explanations seem weak and the time frames seem long.”

What is the council doing?

The taxi usage recommendations were due in 2020 but have been given a new deadline of March this year.

Head of audit and inspection Duncan Black said the staff working on the taxi recommendations had been diverted to work on the climate change summit.

Mr Black said the focus is on areas that would have a critical impact on service delivery or large financial impact.

Pointing out officers are very busy, he said: “Where we see recommendations not being completed in audit we have to form a view of the extent that it causes us concern. We have agreed a date with management that we are comfortable with. If that slips we have to revisit that assessment.”

He said this is the lowest number of outstanding recommendations the council has had for a while .

Long wait

Councillor Ruairi Kelly said some recommendations were first flagged up before he was elected – in 2017.

He mentioned the delay to new processes for handing developer contributions – which was supposed to be delivered by 2018.

He said: “Some of these are stretching into years and years – not months.

“It could have an impact on bringing in revenue where it is the collection of developer contributions.”

He added: “We have seen some of these on every single paper that has come to us. Every single time there is another three or six months put on to it.”

He meeting heard service representatives could come to the meeting to explain the delays.

There were 65 outstanding audit recommendations in December.

Most of them (22) relate to the council’s neighbourhoods, regeneration and sustainability department while 15 relate to the chief executive’s department. Another 13 are in financial services, seven in social work and eight in education services.

Eighteen have a high priority recommendation, 44 are medium and three are low.