Treasury figures obtained by the Gazette show £358million was borrowed from Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes, which will rocket to £1.3 billion – almost four times the initial outlay – by the time it is paid off in 2037.

This means £943million extra will be paid by Islington taxpayers, though this figure does include maintenance on the projects for the length of the contracts.  more

Each year the Council’s accounts are audited and any person interested has the opportunity to inspect and make copies of the accounts and all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to them. (A charge may be made for excessive copies.)
The accounts for the year ending 31 March 2011 and documents will be available at the Council Offices, 7 Newington Barrow Way, London N7 7EP between 9.30am and 4.30pm on Mondays to Fridays from on Monday 27 June 2011 until on Friday 22 July 2011.
If you wish to inspect any documents please apply first to Mohammed Sajid, Chief Accountant, at the above address or call 0207 527 2574/2432/3531 or email Mohammed.Sajid@islington.gov.uk so that arrangements can be made.
From 10.00am on 25 July 2011 until the conclusion of the audit process, a local government elector for the area of the Council, or his/her representative,may:
- ask the auditor questions about the accounts. Please contact the District Auditor, Mr Philip Johnstone, at the Audit Commission, 1^st Floor Millbank Tower, Millbank, London, SW1P 4HQ to make arrangements to ask any questions.

- object to the Council’s accounts asking that the auditor issue a report in the public interest (under section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998) and/or apply to the court for a declaration that an item in the accounts is contrary to law (under section 17 of the Audit Commission Act 1998). Written notice of a proposed objection and the grounds on which it is made must be sent to the auditor at the address given above and copied to me at the following address:
Finance Department,
Floor 2, Council Offices,
7 Newington Barrow Way,
London N7 7EP
Mike Curtis

Companies are making billions of pounds in profits from a secretive trade in PFI contracts. But why are taxpayers able to get so little detail? Gerry Northam investigates.

Related article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13712275

Refers to recent report by the National Audit Office to the Public Accounts Comittee, see

http://web.nao.org.uk/search/search.aspx?Para=2011|PARAYEAR

Various ILA members & leaseholders attended the Audit committee (AC) meeting reviewing reports on HFI’s “Quality of PFI Refurbishment Works” & and the “quality of Partners’ assessments of challenges made by leaseholders’ to their final bills for refurbishment works to their homes.”(LCR).

The meeting heard that in the AC’s opinion, everything was mostly fine, and considered Partners work in general as passing the council approved standard (availability standard) despite the fact that HFI inspectors only inspected 10% of the properties in the PFI2 contract and identified on average issues with all the properties they inspected (271 issue on 216 properties).

HFI also said that they could not inspect any more of the 4000 PFI2 properties, and refused to allocate any more of their 800 staff to property inspection and monitoring the availability standard on this PFI2 £426million contract. The report also says its impossible to judge whether Partners represent Value for money. This was accepted as fine by the AC.

Another (LCR) report said that 26 out of the 30 challanges made by leaseholders were successful with an average reduction in bills being £.1.4k and concluded that Partners treatment of challenges was fair, and made some recomendations to improve and speed up the process. ( full details in report via weblink below)

ILA Chair Dr Brian Potter called “the report a white wash” and invited the chair “Cllr Kelly” to attend the next leaseholders meeting—the invitation was not accepted—instead he asked if I would attend a HFI surgery!

Dr Potter said he was happy to attend any meeting with our councilors but without HFI present—since these meeting were at policy level—and HFI did not set the policy for Islington—The council did…!!!

you can download these reports ( all approved by the Audit committee) here

THURSDAY,    27 January  2011

7.30 pm

Audit  Committee  room  4

Town Hall,
Upper Street,
Islington.

Come along and hear whether you’ve been overcharged?

Call for ‘independent’ body to investigate housing overcharging allegations

http://www.islingtontribune.com/news/2011/jan/call-independent-body-investigate-housing-overcharging-allegations

Some leaseholder have queried:
Will we or won’t we hear the full results of the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ special investigation ?

Why wasn’t the 1st phase continued by Pwc but by the very HfI Officer responsible for Performance instead ?

Why didn’t the independent skilled Internal Audit Team undertake the work ?

Is this especially odd as important Leaseholder financial issues were identified ?

The council say “At the last audit committee meeting, the report into PFI confirmed there had been no fraud – but the council were concerned to learn there had been overcharging of leaseholders in some cases.

The committee asked for the original sample of 20 properties investigated by PWC to be extended, and so we instructed HFI to investigate a further sample of randomly-selected cases. The results of this investigation will be reported back to the audit committee.

The report going to audit committee next week on January 27th will be public and will give an indication of the nature of the work.”

Investigation Contractor Findings
Audit Committee Meeting
On
Thurs 23 Sept 2010
@ Islington Town Hall (Committee Room 4)
Time : 7.30pm sharp

Please also tell leaseholders who do not have emails thank you