Cllr Jim Bollan, Chief Executive Joyce White, Council leader Jonathan McColl and SNP finance spokesperson Ian Dickson.

SPECIAL REPORT by BILL HEANEY 

Community Party councillor Jim Bollan believes he is certain to be reported to the Standards Commission by West Dunbartonshire Council’s chief executive for some of the remarks he made alleging graft and corruption by council officers.

The Democrat was locked out of the monthly meeting of the Council in Clydebank despite arriving early and making a special request to get in after showing documents which would normally have identified any reporter in as a bona fide, card-carrying journalist.

Our last report was compiled from notes made after we were finally allowed in, 90 minutes after the meeting began. This is a much fuller version.

Both Cllr Bollan and the SNP finance spokesperson, Ian Dickson, said they were disappointed that the author of the report, council official Colin McDougall, head of internal audit, was not present to answer questions on its controversial comments.

The Community Party representative said this was “disgraceful” and expressed discontent when it was explained that only senior officers were expected to come to meetings to answer questions and Mr McDougall was not one of them.

He told the meeting: “Who is going to answer my questions then? I sincerely hope this is not an effort to manipulate what we are trying to do her?  I will go to the Information Commissioner about this. It is disgraceful.”

Chief Executive Joyce White, who is not one the officers against whom allegations have been made, said someone would be appointed to give an answer once they knew what the questions were.

Cllr Bollan stated that a senior officer of the council had gone to a contractor’s house with a tender document for a £60,000-plus contract for work on a car park in Dalmuir.

The document was allegedly altered and initialled by the contractor to make his firm’s the lowest tender and the next day the contract was awarded to him ahead of the company which had submitted the lowest tender.

Cllr Bollan asserted that this was “irrefutable evidence” that what he and the then Cllr George Black had been told by a whistle-blower was correct.

But that document had since disappeared and neither he, the police or Mr Black had seen it since, although it could have been in a portfolio prepared by internal audit staff, or in a massively redacted document which the council agreed unanimously was unacceptable.

Cllr Bollan said this could be the reason why the document in which page after page was blanked out had not been produced – “Does that document provide evidence of what the whistle-blower told us,” he asked.

When Mrs White said she did not have the information with her and that Audit Scotland, who were now investigating the matter, would obtain this for him, Cllr Bollan said since she was a council officer, she was answerable to the Council and not to Audit Scotland.

He said: “Officials are responsible to the councillors here. If we have the tender document, it will provide cast iron evidence that it was altered and the contractor got the contract next day.

“I have got to say I really feel I have come into a trap here with this. How the Corporate Management team felt [internal audit manager] Colin McDougall should not be here to answer to what is in the report [is wrong]. I think this is a set up.”

Mrs White said: “A redacted report has been issued to members. The part you are talking about has not been drawn to my attention. There is no information about tender documents being changed.”

She added that the redacted document was circulated at a meeting of the Audit Committee in December and that the Council had responded to questions about it from elected members and from the press – “We have answered them. We have to allow Audit Scotland to do its job.”

Cllr Bollan was not content with the Chief Executive’s response – “I really am bitterly disappointed but not surprised at what has happened here today. How Colin McDougall has not been asked to come here is a dereliction of duty.

“It’s a sham and it’s an attempt to cover this up. It will not work. It’s now in front of the public and the press.”

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The allegations of graft and corruption made by the whistle-blower involve three senior council officials receiving hospitality, including champagne, expensive bottles of wine and T-bone steak dinners in plush Glasgow restaurants.

And a £650 golf outing at Cameron House Hotel on Loch Lomondside.

The person who is said to have entertained them is alleged to have received preferential treatment when it came to placing with his firm council contracts, which totalled £2.4 million of public money.

Cllr Bollan said: “I have 43 receipts with the names of three council officials on the back of them. Some of them had their partners with them.

“The officers’ defence in the redacted document is that any time they got hospitality, they paid their fair share, out of their own pocket.”

The receipts ranged for items totalling as much as three, four and five hundred pounds.

Cllr Bollan asked by which method the council officials paid their share – was it in cash or by cheque – “How did they pay this? Did they pay by cash or did they pay with a bank card or did they pay by cheque because if they did there is a paper trail?”

Once again, Mrs White said she did not have that information with her at the meeting. And that the Auditor [Colin McDougall] did not find anything untoward. He was satisfied there was no need to take any action.

Cllr Bollan replied: “The problem is that the auditor is not here to answer questions. This is serious   ….

“Three senior officers have had their fingers in the till.

“What is happening here is a continuation of the attempts to stop us getting this report.”

When he asked for the report on a number of occasions in the past Cllr Bollan was told it was not ready.

He said: “I waited and I waited and I waited until the 25^th of January, 2018. I asked Mrs White for the report. She said it would not be appropriate to release it. She had it for a year and a half, and she had still not made her mind up [what should happen next].”

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Cllr Bollan said he was then advised that one of the officers mentioned in the report had sought legal advice to stop him getting a copy of the report.

Then he was informed that the same officer had taken out a grievance against him.

He asked about that but received no response over a period of 18 months.

“One thing I have learned is that once you put something into the public domain people need to sit up and take action,” he said.

But the 135-page document was so heavily redacted that “it was as much use as a chocolate poker”.

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Cllr Bollan said he had now appealed through the legal department to have this matter inquired into – “My request was for a suitably redacted report. Nothing apart from the names of the council officers and the company [involved] should be redacted.”

There was no doubt in his mind that a cover-up was going on.  One year after the whistle-blower gave his information to the council he still had no reply.

He claimed: “This is about speaking truth to power, and the abuse of that power.

“It comes as no surprise to me. I have complained for years about too much delegation to officers. They have had their fingers in the till.”

It was at this point, the Council legal officer warned Cllr Bollan about the rules regarding public criticism of officers.

But Cllr Bollan pressed on: “We met the whistle-blower who first gave information to the Council in 2015. We referred the matter to the police and met a detective superintendent and a colleague five times over a period of months to discuss what was going on.

“The police said they were appalled at the lack of basic procedures against this type of fraud being committed.”

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Cllr Bollan said the allegations against the officers were based on “quality evidence” and unless they could prove they paid their fair share of that money then he believed there was “plenty of evidence that there was wrongdoing”.

He Bollan added: “If you were a care worker or a bin man, you would be put into a disciplinary process and dealt with harshly.”

When Cllr Jonathan McColl, the SNP-run council leader, pleaded with Provost William Hendry to give Cllr Bollan extra time to finish his contribution, Cllr Bollan said: “Thanks for recognising that this is an issue that could not be swept under the carpet.”

He added that the Council Audit Officer [Colin McDougall] said the key findings of his report were that council-wide procurement policies and procedures were not always followed in order to get the work done quickly.

In many instances, contracts were awarded without laid down procedures being followed.

There was evidence of complete lack of adherence to the code of conduct and financial procedures not being followed or monitored and inappropriate connections being made.

Yet no one had received a slap on the wrist never mind a verbal warning for this.

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Cllr Bollan said: “There is something being covered up here. George [Black] would have called it a smelly package. I believe there is quality evidence of fraud and corruption and the police also considered there should be a full investigation when they saw the stuff from the whistle-blower.

“The full report – not with 87 pagers blanked out – needs to be seen so that we can test it against what we now know.”

He added that £2.4 million of contracts was involved in this, and that the Head of Internal Audit himself had said what had happened could be “the tip of the iceberg – “It could be happening right across the council. It’s happening in one department that we know of right now.”

Cllr Bollan said: “We need a public inquiry. We need to get to the truth of what has happened. I think it’s important and that we get a properly redacted report and take a view as to whether the process has been open and fair.”

When the legal officer warned that his motion could be illegal, Cllr Bollan said neither he nor Mr Black had ever mentioned any names in public and had promised the whistle-blower that they wouldn’t.

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Peter Hessett, the legal officer, said the report to the Council was prepared by officers using their best judgement.

A review process was now taking place and it should be allowed to take its course.

Mrs White said the Council had a duty of care to its employees and that there were robust audit and HR processes in place to deal with what had happened.

She told Cllr Bollan that she took exception to what he had said and that specific actions had taken place to ensure these changes would happen.

The Council was on an improvement journey in regard to procurement and contracts, she said.

The Chief Executive added: “We are all aware of the processes. That has been in the public domain. I am very concerned about this criticism. “

She objected to allegations of “fingers in the till” and “slaps on the wrist” which she said were unacceptable and the Council should keep moving forward until it had the Audit Scotland report at the end of March.

All the elected members agreed that the auditor’s report had been excessively redacted.

Bailie Denis Agnew said the fact that councillors could not “make head nor tail” of it because of the redaction was “a disservice to the elected members”

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Council leader Cllr McColl said: “It’s an interesting discussion. I think it was more than challenging. It was a difficult contribution. The law prevents us from getting involved in so much here. It is incredibly frustrating when we come up against these legal barriers, especially when we come up against issues like this, which are very serious. I am given some comfort in that the police found no criminality.

“Openness and transparency are absolutely vital. We need to get to know all that has gone on and we need to look at the redactions. I am given reassurance in that Audit Scotland are going to look into the investigation that took place here. We are on a journey to improve. I hope that ourselves and the public get the answers we need in this.”

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However, Cllr Bollan said that a number of councillors had said the police did not take the matter any further – “That is not strictly true. The police interviewed the whistle-blower twice and he could not go into a witness box because of extremely personal reasons.

“The police advised us that if the key witness did not go into the box, they couldn’t proceed.”

He added that the police never reached a stage where they made any decisions about whether they would be taking the matter further.

He said that even in Colin McDougall’s report, the auditor took a sample of 27 reports of how matters had been handled and 20 of them did not follow the council’s own procedures.

This work had been ordered by e-mail and now the   e mails could not be traced.

Cllr Bollan said it looked likely that he would be reported to the Standards Commission, but that he had been there before and was prepared for that.