Council to "put right" £1.15m payment controversy, says deputy leader
The deputy leader of Castle Point Borough Council has reiterated a commitment to "put right" historic potentially unlawful payments made to senior management known to be worth up to £1.15m.
Cllr Warren Gibson also expressed "deep anger" over the payments, which have come under renewed media attention after the council's external auditors Ernst & Young (EY) addressed them.
Members of the authority’s audit and governance committee discussed a draft audit completion report from EY in February, which considered the £1.153m in "potentially unlawful" payments made between 2012/13 and 2021/22.
EY's audit report described the financial impacts of the potentially unlawful payments as "significant".
The external auditors also suggested that there could be other payments that "are of the same nature in 2023/24 as the officers involved remained in post until August 2023 that we were not able to discover due to lack of time and resource to perform the procedures required to address this".
In October 2024, the council announced plans to take legal action to try to recover £281,155 it claimed was improperly paid to its former chief executive, David Marchant, who died in 2021.
Castle Point, meanwhile, agreed to write off the remaining payments that were thought to be potentially unlawful, amounting to £872,000.
In a statement published late last month (27 March), Cllr Warren Gibson said the local authority is aiming to "put this right" through the council's transformation programme, "the success of which has been acknowledged by the Local Government Association", he added.
He said: "Like my fellow councillors and residents, I am deeply angered by what happened in the past.
"We have already put in place procedures to ensure this cannot happen again at Castle Point Borough Council."
The local authority's leader, Cllr David Blackwell, meanwhile, defended its approach, saying that the payments "are not a secret" and adding: "This is a situation which this administration has inherited. Since taking office we have striven to ensure transparency in all areas of the council's business.
"Internal Audit found issues with how the previous administration paid its most senior officers and the failures in governance that allowed it."
He also said that the council has published all legally permissible information and that the council has not published some information as it is subject to legal professional privilege and could prejudice the council's position in relation to legal action.
Adam Carey
