Hidden in plain view

What Morley Town Council Censored in the 2009-2010 annual report:

(2009 figure in brackets)

General Administration £107,204 (£85,877)

Total expenditure £190,630 (£169,107)

Balance as at 31st March £78,623 (£91,660)


(Accurate to within £1 due to rounding- the audit opening balance was £1 less than the annual report opening balance).

This information is in the public domain and "confidentiality issues" is MTC being what a friend of mine described as being... err... shifty.



Where did I track it down? In Morley Library, in a locked filing cabinet with a sign saying "Beware of the leopard"


(Not quite that bad, but two green box files were locked away somewhere upstairs and a helpful Librarian went and fetched them after consulting with someone behind the scenes).


In the box amongst a somewhat jumbled assortment of old Agendas, Minutes & Annual reports, there was the 2009/2010 internal audit report for acceptance at the May Annual general meeting. (I assume they did, the July Agenda with May Minutes hadn't made it to the filing yet).


Reverse engineering the figures once the closing balance is known is of course child's play. The arrogance shown by the Council that those of us who are actually forced to pay 99.9% of the income are not allowed to know the expenditure unless we went to the AGM is nothing short of astonishing.


The question remains, though, as to whether those figures were available for inspection during July, or if they were censored to visitors. (If there were any).


The balance sheet figures in the annual report are presented in a different way to the figures the Audit Commission wants. (e.g. the audit commission aren't interested in which committee spends what).

They do ask for staff costs to be separated out though, and they define staff costs as:-

"Total expenditure or payments made to and on behalf of all employees. Include salaries and wages, PAYE and NI (employees and employers), pension contributions and employment expenses".

The figures for the last three years are:

2008 £53,275
2009 £51,986
2010 £81,404


(The first two figures were published on the town hall noticeboard last year when the internal audit figures were posted alongside the statutory notice of accounts inspection. This year, only the statutory notice was posted, not the internal audit figures. I suspect this is redaction by accidental on purpose oversight, i.e. plausible deniability).


This year has leapt up without any obvious change of staffing in the Town Council office. I also don't see how a compromise settlement with a former employee after losing a tribunal judgement fits in with the definition of Staff costs above. 


Let us see if Mazers agree...