The Council’s Investigatory and Disciplinary Committee met this morning to hear the outcome of the Wragge & Co report into the Undercliff Drive illegal procurement scandal.
We’ve seen the report and it’s pretty long (75 pages), so rather than expect you to wade through it, we’ve picked out the bits that we feel are relevant and of note (split into several posts – more to follow).
It was back in July 2005, during the Procurement Compliance Assessment carried out by QP Group when a number of failings were discovered, most seriously the lack of written contracts with High-Point Rendel.
Those following the case will remember news of the three senior officer suspensions back in February this year.
The decision to suspend followed an independent report carried out by Mark Heath of Southampton City Council.
A week later, two more officers were suspended for their involvement and nearly three months after that, in May 2007, another two officers were suspended.
Following Mark Heath’s report, Wragge & Co were brought in to fully investigate the situation.
During the latest investigation, which took Wragge & Co ten months to complete, they carried out 33 interviews with 25 witnesses. Each interview averaged approximately two to three hours.
They also reviewed around 134 boxes of documents and searched the Council’s email archive, a portion of High-Point Rendel’s document archive and the hard drives of all suspended officers’ computers.
As you will see from the Council Press Release to follow, The Investigatory and Disciplinary Committee today decided to accept all the recommendations and conclusions contained in the report.
It also asked the IW Council cabinet to draw up an action plan at the earliest opportunity to carry out this process and asked its Scrutiny Committee to review the progress of that action plan.
We’ll be brining you more details from the report very shortly, so stay tuned.
