Double Dipping

Peter Haslegrave made this Freedom of Information request to Veritau Limited This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

Waiting for an internal review by Veritau Limited of their handling of this request.

Dear Veritau Ltd,

You have an audit function over the expenditure of North Yorkshire County councillors.

Recent press coverage in "Private Eye" and elsewhere (see, for instance: http://www.real-whitby.co.uk/a-christmas...) has shown inadequacies in these auditing procedures, which have allowed unscrupulous councillors to defraud the taxpayer.

Can you please provide sight of all the correspondence held by Veritau on this sordid affair?

Can you also kindly state what NYCC policy is towards rogue councillors, who commit such blatant fraud?

Finally, can you also please give me sight of all documentation on "double (or more)-hatted" councillors on the City of York Council, who may also be undertaking such blatant frauds?

Can you also provide me with sight of all communications with North Yorkshire Police on this subject, as, presumably, you have acted in the public interest and reproted these crfiminal to the police.

Yours faithfully,
Peter Haslegrave

information.governance@veritau.co.uk, Veritau Limited

Thank you for your email. This email account will be manned intermittently between Christmas and New Year and you will generally receive a response to your email within 24 hours. If however your request is urgent and you require an immediate response please contact Robert Beane on 01904 552933.
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VERITAU EMAIL DISCLAIMER

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The information contained within, and in any attachment(s), is confidential and legally privileged. It is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s), please note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication, or the information within, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. Equally, you must not disclose all, or part, of its contents to any other person.

If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender at the above address, then delete and destroy all copies of it.

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Veritau Limited, Company number 6794890.

Veritau North Yorkshire Limited, Company number 7931990.

The Registered Office for both companies is Douris House, Roecliffe Business Centre, Roecliffe, YO51 9NE.

Please visit the Veritau website www.veritau.co.uk for details of each company's ownership.

Beane, Robert, Veritau Limited

Dear Mr Haslegrave
 
Veritau Ltd is not yet subject to FoI, although enquiries about Veritau
itself are welcome and will be considered. Questions about its clients
however must take account of the confidentiality implicit the audit
relationship, and the contractual obligations that follow from it. In
other words questions about client councils, once the Act does apply to
Veritau, are very likely to be refused under Section 41 of the Act.
 
Although Veritau will usually consider forwarding a request to the
relevant council, in this case it will not do so as you have not described
adequately the information you want. It is unreasonable to expect a public
authority to identify accurately what an enquirer wants by searching other
publications. It could not be confident it had interpreted what it found
there in a way that corresponds with your wishes or intentions.
 
If you wish to submit an enquiry on these matters to either of the two
councils please remember to do so in factual and objective terms, so that
the correct items of information, if held, can be located and retrieved
from their records.
 
Yours sincerely
Robert Beane
 
Robert Beane
Information Governance Officer
Veritau Ltd
Assurance services for the public sector
telephone 01609 533219 (NYCC) or 01904 552933 (CYC)
For further information about us visit our website [1]www.veritau.co.uk
 
SAVE COSTS - PLEASE DON'T PRINT UNLESS YOU HAVE TO

VERITAU EMAIL DISCLAIMER

This communication is from a Veritau group company. Veritau provides
internal audit, counter fraud and information governance services and
other related assurance services to the public sector. Any opinions or
statements expressed in this e-mail are those of the individual and not
necessarily those of Veritau, or its clients.

The information contained within, and in any attachment(s), is
confidential and legally privileged. It is for the exclusive use of the
intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s), please
note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication,
or the information within, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
Equally, you must not disclose all, or part, of its contents to any other
person.

If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender
at the above address, then delete and destroy all copies of it.

Veritau's computer systems and communications may be monitored to ensure
effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes.

Although we have endeavoured to ensure that this e-mail and any
attachments are free from any virus we would advise you to take any
necessary steps to ensure that they are actually virus free.

Veritau disclaims any liability for action taken in reliance on the
content of this communication.

Veritau Limited, Company number 6794890.

Veritau North Yorkshire Limited, Company number 7931990.

The Registered Office for both companies is Douris House, Roecliffe
Business Centre, Roecliffe, YO51 9NE.

Please visit the Veritau website [2]www.veritau.co.uk for details of each
company’s ownership.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.veritau.co.uk/
2. http://www.veritau.co.uk/

Dear Veritau Ltd,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Veritau Ltd's handling of my FOI request 'Double Dipping'.

Mr Beane states that Veritau is not subject to the FOIA. This is not correct. As you are aware, Veritau is jointly owned by York City and North Yorkshire County Councils. While Veritau has not been subject to the provisions of FOIA, it is owned by public sector bodies. As such, Veritau is subjected to the changes in the FOIA in the Protection of Freedoms Bill.

The Bill received Royal Assent on 1 May 2012 and as such is now an Act of Parliament (i.e. law). Please see:

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010...

This means that Veritau is obliged by law to give me this information.

As Mr Beane is refusing to comply with the law here, then I would like to escalate my complaint to the next stage and request an internal review.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/do...

Yours faithfully,
Peter Haslegrave