District Auditor puts Swindon BC in clear over wi-fi contract

The District Auditor for Swindon Borough Council has cleared the local authority over a high-profile wi-fi contract that is intended to make the town the first in the UK to provide free internet access for all its residents, the Swindon Advertiser has reported this month.

The paper suggested that the Conservative-run council had been “locked in a bitter feud” with Swindon’s Labour party over the deal with Digital City, in which the council has a 35% stake. The local authority agreed to provide a loan to Digital City of up to £450,000 to fund the costs of development and installation.

Both the council auditor and the district auditor have now said that the authority was within the law and there were no grounds for a public report, the Swindon Advertiser reported.

Swindon’s leader, Cllr Rod Bluh, said: “The loan arrangement was decided in a lawful, proper way after receiving advice from all the relevant council officers, including the director of law and democratic services. The council’s scrutiny committee, which was chaired at the time by the leader of the opposition, reviewed all the decisions and resolved that due process had been followed.

“The facts are that the council has been exonerated by all internal and external scrutiny bodies.”

Saying he hoped that the District Auditor’s decision would end the division within the council, Bluh pointed out that the authority’s audit committee had found that the correct process had been followed.

Derique Montaut, leader of Swindon’s Labour group, told the Swindon Advertiser: “The main issue the Labour group has had with wi-fi is the decision-making process that was used to agree to it, as the Conservative leader of the council used a decision-making route that neither consulted nor informed your elected representatives of its policy until it was agreed and then published in this paper.

“The Labour group does not agree with this. Our second issue with wi-fi is the precedent it has set for future deals. Indeed, the leader of the council has been repeatedly on record stating his belief that he did nothing wrong and would do things in exactly the same way for future deals.”