Welsh Conservative Shadow Secretary for Communities, Mark Isherwood AM, has challenged the Communities Secretary, Carl Sargeant, this week over the Welsh Government’s apparent failure to enforce financial, human resource and audit controls over its tackling poverty programme, Communities First.
Raising the matter in the Assembly Chamber, he said:
“Of course, Plas Madoc Communities First was a grant-recipient body that received funding direct. After the whistleblower there was vindicated, with the support of, dare I say, Janet Ryder, Eleanor Burnham and myself, and there were convictions in court, we also had two Wales Audit Office reports, one into Plas Madoc specifically and one into Communities First generally, which I’d asked the then Auditor General to commission. Those found, above all, a failure since the inception of Communities First by the Welsh Government to put in place effective corporate governance controls—financial controls, human resource, and audit.
“In Higher Shotton, when the Communities First Co-ordinator whistle-blew against Flintshire County Council, which was the grant-recipient body, she was subjected to what turned out to be false allegations.
“Now, in the context of NSA Afan, the lead delivery body for Communities First in Sandfields and Aberavon, you said last week, that, following an investigation that had provided strong evidence of financial irregularities, NSA Afan had had its funding terminated. Was this a grant-recipient body or not? Had heed been given to the Wales Audit Office findings all those years ago of the need to implement those corporate governance, finance, human resource, and audit controls, which had led to the problems of the past?”
The Communities Secretary replied: “I prefer not to look in detail at NSA Afan because of the ongoing detailed discussions with South Wales Police and with my audit team. What I can tell the Member is that the decision to terminate funding from NSA Afan wasn’t taken lightly - it was taken following a thorough investigation into the financial governance arrangements with NSA Afan.”
Mr Isherwood added: “Well, the particular concern was whether the Welsh Government have acted on the recommendations of the Wales Audit Office all those years ago in terms of ensuring that effective controls were in place.”