Millions spent, rules ignored: A devastating audit has laid bare a two-year collapse in financial control within Dorset Council’s health and safety programme – with £13 million spent largely off-book, 11 officers sacked, and possible dishonesty at senior levels. The report, released last week by the South West Audit Partnership (SWAP), reveals deep structural failings in how the council handled urgent works to bring its buildings up to health and safety standards.
It details how a team of interim staff, brought in after a 2022 internal audit highlighted compliance concerns, operated for nearly two years with minimal oversight. Budgets weren’t properly authorised. Contracts were awarded without competitive tender. Payments were made on the same day, with no checks. Charges included £300 paid for work which is valued at just £20.
‘Governance failures across key operational areas … significant non-compliance with Council policies, poor record-keeping, and a lack of effective oversight,’ the report states.
Undeclared gifts
Despite a Cabinet-approved £4 million budget in 2023, the total spend reached nearly £13 million by 2024 – without Cabinet re-approval, a business case or scrutiny from the council’s usual financial monitoring systems. Some of the funding was quietly taken from surplus reserves – with councillors unaware.
The failings weren’t confined to poor project management. The investigation found breaches of the Council’s Code of Conduct, including undeclared gifts and hospitality, and raised concerns about the timing of key contract signings and decisions coinciding with personal connections and social events.
When did they know?
The council’s new LibDem leadership, in post since mid-2024, says it acted swiftly once irregularities came to light. They ordered the SWAP investigation and also terminated all 11 interim staff in the Place Assets & Regeneration team.
Leader Nick Ireland says the failures ‘predate the current administration’ and has pledged transparency and reform.
Most of the questionable spending occurred under the previous Conservative administration, and the timeline suggests the new leadership acted quickly once the scale of the problem was understood.
Still, with red flags already visible by early 2024, some will question why concerns weren’t more publicly raised during the election campaign – or whether earlier scrutiny might have stopped the overspend sooner.
In a statement, interim Chief Executive Sam Crowe admitted that councillors ‘were not involved in the way they should have been at the time,’ acknowledging that oversight mechanisms failed at both officer and member level.
A failing – or worse?
At its core, the report reveals what happens when urgency is used to justify opacity. The works were considered essential – and they likely were. But in bypassing proper process, the council not only failed on oversight, it may have wasted millions of public money in the process.
Dorset Council says it is now implementing a robust action plan and is working to rebuild public trust. But the implications are broader than just one department. The failures exposed by this report didn’t happen in isolation – they relied on a system that wasn’t watching.
A public Audit and Governance Committee meeting is due in October. The scale of the council’s reputational damage – and how far up it should go – may not be fully clear until then.
