One councillor called it a ‘costly error’
Payment machines in the town were covered (Image: Melton Borough Council)
A “costly” blunder which led to a Leicestershire council making parking free at its car parks earlier this year was caused by a “gap” in a staff handover, it has been revealed. Melton Borough Council (MBC) suspended all charges at its car parks in May – losing more than £44,000 – after discovering notices informing the public of the changes hadn’t been published.
At a meeting of the council’s audit and standards committee last week, members were told the results of a review into council procedures. They heard there was “turbulence” in the department responsible for overseeing the process, which had been caused by a “change in roles”.
The committee also heard staff had tried to reduce the charges on ticket machines to the previous fees after the mistake was identified, but were told by a management company it could lead to all of the machines breaking down due to their age. Senior figures in the council stressed it wasn’t part of a wider “systemic failure”, with chief executive Edd de Coverly saying it was a “management responsibility” and that “this is on us”.
Mr De Coverly said the change in roles had created “a turbulence”, but that a “comprehensive handover” had taken place to the officer taking over the job. He added: “It did clearly not capture every nuance of this responsibility and that led to the gap that led to ultimately the ineffective implementation.”
He said the review had shown there was a “vulnerability” caused by responsibilities changing where “those who then started to pick this up were not equipped with the same level of knowledge or legal understanding as those who were doing it before.” He added: “That is something that ideally we would have anticipated. These things are done with the best of intentions. We acted within days.”
But Councillor Leigh Higgins, who chaired the meeting, said: “This was a costly error. My view is that’s a management error for not overseeing the individual who was going through that.”
Coun Ian Atherton added: “Individual small things happened that lined up all the holes in the cheese to cause a significant impact. I have a concern that not only was there a failing in oversight, potentially from an officer’s perspective, but also from cabinet’s perspective.”
Suggesting members of the council’s cabinet should also take responsibility, Coun Atherton added: “It concerns me that the implication is that, apart from one person who now is no longer a member of the council, nobody knew what was going on, yet in order to present [the increased fees] to cabinet there must have been a plan.”
Coun Mike Brown asked: “Where else is there a gap in the documentation?” He said it was important that “we don’t fall into this trap again”.
Rachel Ashley-Caunt, the council’s chief internal auditor, said they were “revisiting a number of different areas and a number of different processes” as part of the review, and that they would be checking procedures were documented.
“Who was responsible for the change in job description?” Coun Simon Orson asked. He suggested there might be “a bit of a bad working culture at Melton Borough Council” where people couldn’t admit to a mistake.
But Mr de Coverly said it was “not appropriate” to comment about the individual officer involved, and denied there was a blame culture saying there had been “no one pointing fingers at anyone else, no one lacking accountability”, which he said would be ” indications there was a blame culture, which I do not believe to be the case and I do not believe there’s evidence to support that”.
Coun Tim Webster asked why fees had been completely suspended for three weeks, saying he thought it would be “quite a simple thing” to change the machines back to the old charges. Lydia Rusling, director of place and prosperity, said: “We were advised we weren’t able to make that change immediately and that it would take a period of 10 – 14 days with no guarantee they could facilitate the change. It could have led to significant breakdown across the machines and that was the rationale for why we didn’t just revert the cost back.” But she added new machines were going to be installed in the car parks later this year.
In June, opposition councillors claimed the mistake had cost the council £57,500 in lost fees, but Councillor Sarah Cox said the number was actually £44,836, which she said represented less than one per cent of the council’s expenditure.
