Eric Pickles praises armchair auditors

He's possibly an unlikely fan, but Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, has come out in fulsome praise of the "armchair auditor" activists in Barnet, who so assiduously uncovered a £1.3m audit failure involving a private security firm hired by the Tory flagship borough of Barnet.

As I wrote in a previous post, the Barnet bloggers who unravelled the MetPro scandal not only spotted a failing the official auditor had missed, but succeeded in profoundly embarrassing the council and its much-touted plans to outsource swathes of municipal services.

In his speech to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy conference in Birmingham this morning, Pickles paid earnest tribute to the bloggers:

"I was shocked by a recent case in Barnet.
The council had hired a private security firm, MetPro, which included "keeping an eye" on the local armchair auditors and activist bloggers - at a cost of over a million pounds.
The contract had been awarded without a tendering exercise, without a written contract, and no proper invoicing.
An internal audit showed there [were] "serious deficiencies in current procurement arrangements", and there were no guarantees that against a repeat of such practices.
Irony of ironies - this misuse of public money was uncovered thanks to the determination of local bloggers and activists…
Including Barnet Eye. Mr Mustard. And Mrs Angry. (As she had every right to be)
Exactly the same people MetPro snooped upon.
I've got news for Barnet. Liveblogging from council meetings. Microjournalism. Call it what you like.
It's here to stay."

I hope to examine Pickles' ambivalent attitude to auditors in another blog post, but for now hats off to Barnet Eye, Mr Mustard, Mrs Angry, Mr Reasonable and Vickim57. They may well be slightly surprised by the source of the praise. As Mrs Angry tweeted this afternoon:

"Is this a wind up? I am about to go and lie down on the sofa with a bottle of smelling salts."

Update: Thursday 7 July, 18.56pm

Barnet council has issued a statement in response to Eric Pickles's comments on the MetPro scandal:

Leader of Barnet Council, Councillor Richard Cornelius, said: "Something seems to have got lost in translation here. At no point has Barnet Council ever paid £1 million to "snoop" on anyone. We will be in contact with Eric Pickles' office."