A committee has heard for the second time in nine months that council officers have been overstepping their authority when dealing with contractors.
The council’s audit committee heard last week when staff tested financial controls within its housing repairs and improvement service they found officers had authorised eight payments they were not supposed to.
In addition, internal auditors found that one officer had authorised the payment of a sum greater than it had been agreed the officer could authorise and another five invoices which had been processed by the department were in fact duplicates.
It comes nine months after the same committee was told earlier testing of all the council’s services had found three contract award letters had been signed by officers who did not have the…