IN THE NEWS
BANKRUPT BIRMINGHAM COUNCIL SHOULD EXPLAIN £116M BLACK HOLE IN SCHOOL TAXI SPENDING
As MailOnline continues its inves- tigation into bankrupt Birming- ham City Council’s school taxi bills, questions continue to be raised over the £116m spending black hole. Council records show the values for all 163 four-year school tran- sport contracts are exactly £64,938.27, around £10.5million in total (plus £1.5m for recently published contracts), around ten times less than the £128m the council paid out from 2020 to July this year, according to MailOnline analysis of invoices data. The £64,938.27 figure was just low enough to avoid publishing trans- parency data, raising renewed questions over awarding millions of pounds of school transport contracts to Green Destinations Ltd (GDL) - owned by Jameel Malik - which charged more than £200 a day to take a child three miles to school and back. This comes as opposition Tories at the troubled Labour-run council renewed calls for an investigation and the publication of internal audits, after education director Sue Harrison promised the committee their release on 25 October. Conservative deputy leader Ewan Mackey said MailOnline raised ‘very serious questions’, adding: “Labour should publish the audit reports in full, as well as answer the discrepancies highlighted”. The council has since added that a comprehensive spend report is being produced. But more than a week later, these reports have still not been released. The council has previously refused FoI requests from MailOnline for the investigation report, saying the
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‘information was given in con- fidence’. The Information Com- missioner is now deciding if the audits should be released. From April 2020 to July this year, invoices data suggests the council paid all school taxi firms a total of £128million - nearly £12m in 2020, £27m in 2021, £52.3m in 2022 and £36.9m this year until July. In total, Green Destinations Ltd has invoiced the council £41.8m in three and a half years - £1.1m in 2020, £6m in 2021, £18m in 2022 and £16.5m to July this year. When asked by audit scrutiny committee chairman, Labour’s Cllr Fred Grindrod, to explain why all 163 school contracts were the same value, procurement head Mike Smith said ‘for the purposes of our transparency
requirements’ he
effectively took the total estimated cost and divided it by 163 to get an average contract value. Tory Cllr Meirion Jenkins blasted the explanation, telling Mr Smith: “In terms of understanding the point of the transparency, an averaging across the whole thing is pretty meaningless.” Referencing the MailOnline investigation into GDL, Cllr Jenkins asked internal audit boss Sarah Dunlavey: “Does £200 a day to take a child three miles a day to school seem like a reasonable taxi fare?” “It hasn’t been considered to be fraudulent, no,” she replied. Cllr Jenkins also asked her for any investigations into the service to be made available to the audit committee. Ms Dunlavey replied: “We have been in and looked at accusations against various pro- viders and concluded that, as far as
we can tell there was no system- atic or deliberate overcharging.” Labour Cllr Karen McCarthy, cabinet member for Children, told the committee: “Care for our most profoundly needy children is expensive, whether it’s transport or care in a variety of settings.” Cllr Jenkins responded: “No one has let me as a member of audit committee get sight of that report. And in fact nobody has really said why it costs £200 a day.” Cllr Mackey told MailOnline that it has raised very serious questions which deserve thorough investi- gation and a transparent response. “This is particularly so given the history of this service in Birming- ham where we already know there have been previous breaches of procurement rules, failings in con- tract management and incorrect and misleading information pro- vided to opposition councillors and the public by the Labour cabinet. “These errors have not only cost significant sums of public money, but also put children at risk,” he said. Cllr Mackey added: “Labour in Birmingham have promoted a culture of sweeping problems under the carpet and should publish the audit reports in full, along with any other investigation, as well as answering the dis- crepancies highlighted by Mail- Online, so that there can be full public confidence that this matter is being treated seriously and all appropriate action being taken.” MailOnline has raised questions about seemingly inaccurate information being told to the audit committee with its chair Cllr Grindrod. He has not responded.
DECEMBER 2023 PHTM
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