Deal worth £1m scrapped over 'honesty' concerns

A £1m council contract is being scrapped just weeks after it was approved due to concerns about the "honesty" of the deal.

In March, Waverley Borough Council (WBC) signed off a project to bring its grounds maintenance contracts in house, but it was ripped up at a recent full council meeting.

Local Conservative leader Jane Austin, who raised the motion called for it to be rescinded, said: "Officers now agree this decision was not safe and could have potentially been open to challenge."

WBC had previously argued the contract would ensure the council was "able to provide a high-quality grounds maintenance."

With devolution and local government reorganisation looming, opponents questioned spending money on a service that had an uncertain future, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.

Extracts from the original motion said there were concerns the executive may have voted without having been provided all the facts, the LDRS said.

It added that there was a lack of confidence that "fairness, impartiality and transparency can be satisfactorily demonstrated".

It also said there was evidence that placed "significant concerns that councillors have not been provided with all the facts/have potentially been misled".

Councillor Austin said: "What was in question here was honesty, honesty from councillors, and actually from officers.

"Certainly what was in the reports, whether our decision-making process was robust and whether the councillors had been provided with sufficient appropriate information that they could rely on."

The opposition-led motion was backed by council leader Paul Follows, although the Liberal Democrat councillor took issue with questions over honesty from councillors who he said were relaying information given to them in good faith.

He added that he had his suspicions over the root causes of the issue but that it would not be appropriate to go into them.

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