AUDITORS who uncovered a multi-million pound black hole in South Yorkshire Police’s accounts have warned immediate measures will have to be taken - after police chiefs confirmed the shock findings will impact its service.
The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) - which was transferred to the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority in May - resulted in Mayor Oliver Coppard taking on a dual role.
Mr Coppard’s finance team found a ‘significant’ error in the OPCC’s accounts and future-year budgets.
It was revealed that in recent years £65m has been spent on equipment such as kit for officers, vehicles and IT gear and services.
The work undertaken by the SYMCA finance team has identified that £16m of charges that should have been made to allow for the repayment of this debt so far have been missed and that future payments of £49m have not been included in spending plans going forward.
These problems ‘would appear to represent a fundamental error in accounting practices’, they revealed, and the errors were not identified by annual audit checks from 2020 onwards.
In response, Mr Coppard has asked them to commission an immediate independent review of the accounts of the former OPCC - which was then led by Dr Alan Billings - to understand how the issue arose.
Chief Constable Lauren Poultney said: “I have learnt of a significant error in the accounts formerly held by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and the impact this will have on the financial stability of South Yorkshire Police.
“The mayor informed me of this two weeks ago and since then we have worked together at pace to understand how this happened, the impact of this and the options available to us.
“We have a well-established savings and efficiency programme and healthy reserves which will mean we can come at this from a relatively healthy and robust position but this is not how we would seek to manage our finances and it will, of course, have impacts on the service we deliver.
“My priority now is to safeguard the services we provide to the public.”
A report, compiled by SYMCA chief finance officer Gareth Sutton and monitoring officer Rebecca Brookes, said ‘reactionary measures including the cessation of planned activity and the re-allocation of resources currently deployed to priority work, risks and priorities’ will commence.
Mr Coppard added: “I am deeply frustrated by the problems uncovered by my team following the transfer of OPCC powers into my office earlier this year.
“We are working at pace with the government, external auditors and South Yorkshire Police to mitigate the impact the required charges will have on budgets going forward.
“These problems would appear to represent a fundamental error in accounting practices in the office of the former PCC.
“Those mistakes were missed by external and internal checks.
“I have now instructed my office to bring in an external team to independently look at the processes that allowed those mistakes to go undetected for five years.’
Leader of Barnsley Council, Sir Steve Houghton, told the Chronicle that the local authority is keeping tabs on the situation.
“The news is very concerning,” he said.
“We’ll be following the conversations between SYMCA, South Yorkshire Police and the government closely.”
