Serious concerns over missing cash in a Bristol City Council team supporting refugees have started to be addressed, but there are still grave problems. Last year auditors raised serious concerns that hundreds of pounds were left unaccounted for and the team had “wide and unrestricted access to cash”.
The team handles thousands of pounds in cash every week, used to help people fleeing war and persecution resettle in Bristol. The money comes from grants via the Home Office, which are administered by local councils. But in Bristol, some of that cash had been going missing.
The amount of cash delivered to the team has reduced by a quarter since then, and most of the team members have now been trained on fraud awareness. An update on the progress was given to councillors on the audit committee on January 28.
A year ago, council auditors gave “no assurance” about the controls on the cash. Since then, some progress has been made, and a recent review instead gave “limited assurance”, meaning there are still grave problems. Nine out of 12 recommendations have now been carried out.
Francesca Wickens, interim head of Bristol sanctuary services, said: “We’ve got 98 per cent of our service users now on payment cards, and this represents a massive improvement in oversights, controls and ability to report. We’ve had bespoke training [on fraud awareness] and 88 per cent of the service has now undertaken that, with the rest scheduled in February.”
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The sanctuary services team helps with housing, support and cash for day-to-day living, funded through different government schemes. Subsistence support can amount to over £20,000 per week, previously paid in cash. However, the previous audit review found that controls on handling this cash “may not be robust, exposing the council to fraud”.
Since then, the team has switched to mostly using payment cards instead of cash. Controls on the remaining cash used have also been tightened up. But “limited assurance” still means that there is further work to be done, before the auditors can be confident the problems are solved.
Remaining problems include that one council officer is “solely responsible” for ordering cash, preparing payments receipts, counting cash, and inputting data into a finance spreadsheet. An office cabinet storing imprest notes, which record how much cash has been delivered, was inaccessible as the council officer who had the key was on long-term leave.
Officers in charge of helping people with no recourse to public funds were meant to spend £1.5 million a year, but instead spent £4.5 million. The application process will be reviewed to “ensure support is only provided to individuals who are entitled”.
Labour Councillor Rob Logan, chair of the audit committee, said: “I think this is tremendous. There’s been such a lot of progress since the last report. Moving a system that was mostly cash-based to a system that’s almost exclusively card-based is a big deal, that’s a difficult thing to do.”