Question

Agreed it is only when money comes into the equation that's when people think twice. [closed]

Answer 1

Many cllrs and clerks lack the knowledge and experience to make informed spending decisions. For example one Town Council wanted to make audio recordings of its meetings and the clerk advised them to spend over £400 on a system when an £80 journalist field recorder would have been better. It doesn't take too many of these errors for a third tier council to end up mis using public money. And the electorate can't do anything about it. Often they only get to know if they scrutinize the accounts, assuming those are freely available anytime, which is not always the case.

Comments

"value for money" is the challenge and Standing Orders and/or Financial Regulations spell out how to achieve this.

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I don't think they provide the detailed checks and methods of of determining those attributes.

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Well they do - they require that the Clerk engages a specialist to prepare a specification ... that, with competitive tendering, does the bob.