I AM a chartered accountant and I live in Woking. Ever since I had the right to vote I’ve always voted Conservative. However, the Ernst and Young independent report into Woking Borough Council’s finances in January 2022 started to lift the lid on the scale of what’s been going on in the local authority that runs our town.

The people of Woking would never have voted for councillors and council officers to take it upon themselves to gamble with our cash.

Woking is a small town with a 100,000 population. Its tax revenue is around £11.5million a year yet the council has amassed borrowings of more than £1.8billion with no means to repay it or meet its £50m plus annual interest bill.

No-one gave these people the green light to set up an unauthorised bank and borrow money from the UK Treasury to make loans to organisations including an independent school. No-one gave Woking either any exception from the rules laid down of what they were allowed and not allowed to do with UK Treasury money.

The government caught up with the people in Woking and elsewhere in 2020. Rules and monitoring at UK Treasury were tightened and Woking ought to have got the message (like other local authorities) that easy access to Treasury money was no longer an option. Sadly for all of us, Woking Borough Council thought it knew better.

It was not until the Liberal Democrats took charge in Woking in May last year that we started to see previous  year audited accounts which showed all the council’s operating businesses were loss making. Moreover, none of the Sheerwater Regeneration money had been kept in separate accounts and there is real doubt now that some of the planned new homes in that community will ever be built.

The government’s Levelling Up Department sent in their own team to review the council’s books in January 2023 and their report at the end of last month put the blame full square on the previous regime.

Without a commitment from the government to fully fund the council’s debts, Woking had no choice other than to “effectively” bankrupt itself in order to continue to function.

Since then, TV journalist Robert Peston hit out the other day and described the previous style of leadership of the former Conservative-led council “as unbelievable financial recklessness and incompetent”. 

He called the individuals “numpties” and Kelvin McKenzie, former editor of The Sun national newspaper, weighed in too and described the leadership on social media “as brain-dead idiots”. 

Woking has had local news coverage on BBC and ITV. The people of the borough have been badly let down.

If Croydon and Thurrock and other “bankrupt” local authorities are a guide, people in Woking and local businesses are going to be required to make a contribution to the £1.2b losses at the end of last year that’s set to climb in the next two years or so to £1.5b. 

Taxpayers in the rest of the country will have to pick up the rest of the bill and no wonder the Taxpayers Alliance is up in arms. 

What is also distressing, so many services in our town can no longer be delivered.

The government report last month told us that corporate governance had been non-existent. The report confirms that many council actions on the face of it were not transparent. Why, too, were independent councillors and others always shouted down when they tried to ask questions?

What lay behind the decisions to enter into partnership(s) with a “fragile’  Northern Ireland property company that has since gone into administration? Why did Woking hand over all controls of its 48 per cent-owned associate company Victoria Square Woking Ltd to another party to manage its exposure on a £750m development loan – now written down to £200m?

Why did Woking lend money to third parties without any proper evaluation of security? 

Why did it lend money at below market rates? 

And why were its borrowers often given the option of putting very little money of their own into a venture? 

Warning lights went on for me too when tax evasion was also highlighted in the government report.

I’m not surprised social media is full of comment that there should be forensic investigation of all those concerned – in particular the council’s former chief executive and his accountant, and the three previous council leaders, including the two who have sat on the board of the Victoria Square development company in recent periods.

These people should surely have had real doubts over how they would find the money to complete the Victoria Square project.