FINANCIAL ineptitude at West Devon Borough Council has been blamed for the demise of a local housing charity while thousands of pounds of council money remained unspent.
But the borough treasurer dismissed the assertion as 'complete rubbish'.
Liberal Democrat financial spokesman Nicholas Waterhouse said while councillors were engaged in the annual barrel scraping for end-of-term funds they were astonished to find that while they were refusing funding for Housing Aid West Devon there was some £500,000 lying unknown and unused in council coffers.
'When last year's accounts came up for approval at last week's council meeting, members discovered that while they were pulling the rug from under a local housing charity for lack of a £5,000 grant, the borough's budget for the current year was a cool half a million pounds underspent,' he said. 'A lot of small charities and local organisations suffered cuts because of the belief that the council didn't have any money.'
Mr Waterhouse said king of the small spenders was the policy and resources committee, which was £400,000 underspent.
'Apart from simple accounting errors where money was put in the wrong pigeonhole, no one seems to have noticed that £140,000 of the budget for housing benefit didn't seem to be attracting takers,' he said.
'This discrepancy and the fiasco over the Government "fine" (concerning excessive council tax demands, now redressed with a new budget) show that members need to take a lot more interest in how the council tax payers' money is handled in the council.
'We can't take decisions that are fair to local people and local organisations if we have no idea of the council's real financial results.'
Borough treasurer Lesley Halton said: 'It's complete rubbish. He's just trying to score a political point.'
She explained that the money making up the apparent overspend came mostly from two sources — the major part of the money, £270,000, was a result of new Government legislation introduced after the budget was set.
When assets, such as the council house stock transferred to West Devon Homes in February 1999, were sold only 25 per cent was permitted to be spent by the council. The remainder has to go into a special account and accrues interest.
However, thanks to a new power, the council was able to release an additional £270,000 for revenue purposes, she said.
Miss Halton said in addition to that, fewer people were claiming benefits, such as housing benefit, leaving a further £140,000 unused.
'Obviously if a factory were to close down that would shoot back up again. It's very difficult to estimate,' she said.
Other savings had been made on salaries, leaving approximately £500,000 left over, about 9 per cent of the £5.5-million budget.
'It's prudent management,' she said. 'It's better to have a small underspend than an overspend.'