Who was paid a £150,707 salary by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority?
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Monty Python’s famous sketch about chartered accountancy (as it’s very hard to make jokes about this subject)
As it states in the video above, accountancy can be dull. However I wrote this email below (sent the day before the meeting) about a disclosure mistake in the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority accounts for 2014/15. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority meets this morning to approve the accounts for 2014/15.
It’s quite simple really, about six years ago the law changed so that public sector employees that are paid a salary of £150,000 or more had to be named in the accounts.
For example on page 160 of the accounts for the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority approved last week Dan Stephens, the Chief Fire Officer (on a salary of £170,000) is named. In fact Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority also name the Deputy Chief Fire Officer and Deputy Chief Executive, as despite their salaries being below the £150,000 threshold it is more transparent to do so as the total they receive is over the £150,000 threshold.
The Chief Executive of Merseytravel (David Brown) on a salary of £150,707 should’ve been named in the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s accounts. The email below from myself details the reasons why (KPMG are the external auditors for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority). Hopefully this will be sorted out at the meeting and corrected.
Subject: agenda item 7 (Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Final Accounts 2014/15) meeting 20th September 2015
To: Cllr Phil Davies
CC: Mayor Joe Anderson
CC: Cllr Barrie Grunewald
CC: Robert Hough
CC: Cllr Andy Moorhead
CC: Cllr Rob Polhill
CC: Cllr Ian Maher
CC: David Brown (Chief Executive/Director General, Merseytravel)
CC: Louise Outram (Monitoring Officer, Merseytravel)
CC: Angela Sanderson (Monitoring Officer, LCRCA)
CC: Stephanie Donaldson (Head of Internal Audit, Merseytravel)
CC: Tim Cutler (Partner, KPMG LLP (UK))
CC: Ian Warwick (Manager, KPMG LLP (UK))
CC: Richard Tyler (Assistant Manager, KPMG LLP (UK))
Dear all,
I am bringing this up in advance of Monday’s meeting, in the hope it can be amended. If it isn’t amended, please class this as a formal objection by a Merseyside local government elector to the accounts of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority for 2014/15.
The draft statement of accounts at note 9 (which is page 41 in the numbering of the report or page 67 of the supplementary agenda) contains details of the remuneration paid to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s senior employees.
For the year 2015 (I presume this means financial year 2014/15), the Chief Executive/Director General received a salary of £150,707.
A number of years ago the Accounts and Audit (Amendment no 2) (England) Regulations 2009, SI 2009/3322 changed the audit regulations (this change started in financial year 2009/2010) and added the paragraph below:
(i) senior employees, or
(ii) relevant police officers,
in respect of their employment by the relevant body or in their capacity as a police officer, whether on a permanent or temporary basis, to be listed individually in relation to such persons who must nevertheless be identified by way of job title only (except for persons whose salary is £150,000 or more per year, who must also be identified by name)."
This requirement was kept in The Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2011, SI 2011/817 reg 7(2)(c) and the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, SI 2015/234 (which although referred to in the draft statement of accounts will apply from the 2015/16 financial year onwards).
Clearly, the Chief Executive should’ve been explicitly named and wasn’t. I think everyone I write this email to will know he’s called David Brown, but the draft statement of accounts should be amended to state this.
It’s a basic issue of openness and transparency (which I’m sure you’d expect the press to take a viewpoint on).
Yours sincerely,
John Brace
P.S. I know Merseytravel’s accounts are audited separately to the LCRCA, has the same error been made there too?
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