In a scathing personal statement, the Chairman of Oakham Town Council has branded a newly released internal governance review as the single worst audit report he has ever read, warning residents that the local authority has effectively lost control of its administrative and financial systems. The unfolding crisis has deepened into an operational emergency following the revelation that a sitting town councillor took it upon themselves to contact HSBC Bank with false information regarding the council's Clerk, a rogue action that directly prompted the bank to freeze the authority’s primary accounts.
The independent evaluation, conducted by internal auditor Stuart McDonald on behalf of the Leicestershire and Rutland Association of Local Councils (LRALC), reveals a staggering breakdown in basic oversight. Out of fourteen active governance indicators scrutinised during the review, Oakham Town Council collapsed into non-compliance on eight separate fronts, chalking up an unprecedented fifty-seven percent failure rate. While the auditor stopped short of alleging deliberate fraud or criminal financial misconduct, the sheer volume of administrative backlogs and unmitigated risks has prompted the council’s newly appointed Locum Clerk to warn that a full forensic audit may now be required a complex, costly exercise that the Chairman has vowed to fully support.
What makes the diagnostic report so damning is that it represents a systemic, multi-year failure rather than a sudden lapse. The council had previously received explicit warnings from both internal investigators and external auditors regarding these identical operational blind spots, yet elected members repeatedly failed to implement corrections. This structural neglect left the council entirely vulnerable when hit by a wave of severe staff absences. In a chaotic game of musical chairs, in 2025 a sitting councillor served as acting Responsible Financial Officer (RFO) for a brief window before handing duties back to a staff member who almost immediately went back out on long-term leave. Consequently, the temporary personnel left to facilitate the audit were individuals who were not even running the office during the period under review.
The financial and operational consequences of this administrative vacuum are severe. Due to a complete failure to update its official Risk Register, the council found itself unable to execute basic functions cleanly, forcing the primary RFO to run May salary payments from home while on leave. Worse, the absent acting officer was left with no online banking access whatsoever, creating a highly irregular reliance on individual council members to log in and authorise routine public transactions. In another instance of total systemic blackout, a separate building society investment account has remained completely unverified because no one at the authority has possessed the access credentials since late last year.
Beyond frozen bank accounts and digital lockouts, the audit unmasked widespread violations of statutory UK employment and financial transparency laws. The council has been operating with an acting RFO who lacks a legal contract of employment, while individual staff salary rates were hidden away in aggregated budget lines without formal council approval or minuted debate. The authority's tracking of over 1.7 million pounds in fixed public assets was dismissed as heavily flawed, evidenced by the sudden, untraceable disappearance of thousands of pounds worth of public Christmas decorations from the official ledger, alongside the lazy bundling of massive asset classes into unitemised blocks.
The Chairman has used the release of these findings to take aim at internal political resistance, heavily criticising past assertions by fellow councillors who had publicly minimised the council's financial issues. He also directly rejected a recent dramatic admission from one councillor, who claimed the chairman was soley responsibility for the council’s institutional failures and demanded the chairmans resignation. Urging his colleague to review the last five years of critical reports to recognise the deeper, cultural rot at play, the Chairman made it clear that he has no intention of stepping aside quietly. Declaring that the council is a legitimate branch of public governance rather than an unaccountable gentlemen's club, he has pledged to remain in office to fight for an administration that is legally compliant, financially transparent, and finally fit to serve the people of Oakham.
The internal auditors report 2025-2026
