Bristol Energy ‘Warts and all’ report into failings to be published
THE warts-and-all “full story” of the city council’s Bristol Energy disaster will be told within months or even weeks, councillors were promised.
But the authority’s external auditors are yet to decide whether it will be a standard audit report or the more serious “public interest” report, which is where a “significant matter” should be brought to the attention of the public and the Government.
Local politicians from all sides have blamed each other for the calamitous energy firm, which has had £36.5million of council taxpayers’ money sunk into it since it was launched by former mayor George Ferguson’s cross-party administration in 2015 and ramped-up under Marvin Rees’s Labour regime.
It failed to break even, posting multi-million-pound losses every year of trading, and was eventually split up and sold off for a fraction of the amount ploughed into it.
Bristol City Council’s external auditors Grant Thornton published a report in January condemning the authority’s arrangements for making decisions about the company as “inadequate”.
The report into the governance arrangements for 2019/20 concluded cabinet members were not properly informed before investing more money.
It said the information they received from the shareholder group “did not clearly state the risks” and was “out of date” and that Bristol Energy’s business plan was “unrealistic”.
Mayor Marvin Rees has said the decisions were reasonable but that the council should not have entered the energy market in the first place, while opposition groups maintain their repeated warnings for the council to cut its losses were ignored.
Now, following a request from the local authority, Grant Thornton partner Jon Roberts is compiling what is expected to be the definitive story explaining how things went so badly wrong and exactly how much money has been lost forever to the public purse.
He told a recent meeting of the audit committee: “I am very satisfied with how the council has responded to the challenge of this issue and is taking our audit findings very seriously.
“We are not finished with Bristol Energy. We can issue something called a ‘report in the public interest.’
“Indeed, we’ve been asked to issue that style of report by a number of parties relating to Bristol Energy, and we’re still reflecting on that. What we have done is more work. The story of Bristol Energy has a beginning, a middle and an end.
“The value-for-money audit work we did last year was the middle bit as the council made its decision eventually to sell the company.
“But there were the early stages of the story which is answering the question ‘How did the council go about assuring itself it was right to be investing in such a company in the first place?.’
“And the end of the story is ‘Did the council get a good deal for the disposal and did it follow reasonable arrangements of ensuring that it protected the value for money for that issue when it came to the disposal?.’”
Mr Roberts told members the work on the beginning and end of the story had been completed and a report was being compiled which would also include the middle section. He said: “I am still reflecting on what style of report that will be. A public interest report is an option but I certainly have other options for reporting. It could be just a standard audit report.
”I will give that further consideration and I am actually not allowed to form a view on that until I have all the facts and have done some testing of our findings with officers.”
Mr Roberts said he would be in a position to decide what kind of report it would be this month.
“If I issue it as a standard audit report, it’s a shorter timescale,” he said.
“If we report it as a public interest report, it is through our quasi-judicial powers, so it is a more serious style of report and requires more serious consideration and response from the council.
“A public interest report typically takes four months to complete. A standard audit report could be done in a month or two.”
Committee chairman Cllr Gary Hopkins asked at the City Hall meeting: “So one way or another – because that is an area which has a huge amount of public interest – we should have within months a report which tells the whole story, accurately, in words the public can understand?”
Mr Roberts replied: “That is my absolute intention.”
One way or another we should have within months a report which tells the whole story, accurately, in words the public can understand
Cllr Gary Hopkins