The report by Wragge & Co on the Undercliff Drive investigation runs to 75 pages, so will take a while for us to digest. It builds and refers to the previous reports carried out by Addleshaw Goddard, QP, Heath and Sharpe Pritchard the earliest of which started in 2005.
The Wragge Report found “systematic and on-going failures of the Council’s processes and internal controls, and inadequate supervision and line-management of and by a number of officers.” “Officers interviewed provided no coherent or consistent explanation as to why the failure to comply with the EU Procurement Regulations and Contract Standing Orders (“CSOs”) occurred in the first place and why the project was not put onto a sound contractual footing once the problem was uncovered.”
“A culture of officers from the top down taking an unduly narrow and restrictive view of their role. This has undoubtedly been a factor in the catalogue of problems.”
As to how all of this could have come to be, the Wragge Report found a “complex interaction between factors such as inadequate training, incompetence, a failure to comply with Council systems and procedures, poor supervision and inadequate checks and balances.”
They highlighted “multiple failures of the internal controls, obligations to record, report, investigate, monitor and ensure compliance with the internal rules, or to remedy the defects when found.”
“Several officers were found wanting in their conduct and capabilities. Some were reckless, others indifferent, but all failed to discharge important elements of their duties to the Council.”
“There was an apparently widespread failing to understand, or follow, basic council procedures in the Engineering Department, and what can be best described as indifference or tolerance of this by the rest of the organisation.”
Perhaps for those involved there will be relief that Wragge found it “difficult to apportion ‘blame'”. Wragge state that “it is unhelpful to the organisation to dwell on that issue [blame], as a blame culture does nothing to encourage reporting.”
Quite if that will satisfy the tax-paying citizens of the Isle of Wight – only time will tell.
