Auditors flag high-risk control failures across £80.9m of Flintshire council spending
Flintshire County Council’s Streetscene and Transportation department spent £80.9 million over two years without adequate contract controls in place, an internal audit has found.
The audit gave the department the council’s worst possible assurance rating after finding four high-risk and four medium-risk failures.
The Red rating means auditors concluded there was “a lack of adequate or effective controls” and that “urgent system revision is required.”
The findings go before Flintshire’s Environment and Economy scrutiny committee on Tuesday before the full audit and action plan are presented to the Governance and Audit Committee on 17 March.
The audit covered all Streetscene spending between 2022 and 2024, excluding transport contracts and trunk road work managed through separate frameworks.
Flintshire County Council uses a centralised procurement system called Proactis, which is supposed to hold records of all contracts above £20,000.
At the time of testing in January 2025, 12 contracts were listed on Proactis for Streetscene and Transportation.
Of those 12, only six had signed contract documents evidenced on the system.
Total non-transport supplier spend in 2023/24 alone was £41,347,710.
Auditors identified significant cumulative spend with a small number of suppliers, with the top four between them accounting for nearly £43 million of the two-year total.
Those four suppliers had contracts in place, but the contracts were held internally within the department rather than on the corporate Proactis system.
For five other suppliers selected for detailed review, auditors found no contracts registered at all on the corporate system, despite combined spend running into millions of pounds.
The audit also examined the council’s Quick Quotes system, which is designed for purchases expected to come in below £20,000.
Of 757 Quick Quotes projects identified across the council between 2022 and 2025, auditors found 36 where every quote received came in above the £20,000 threshold.
Those 36 projects should have gone through a more formal tendering process.
The Chief Officer was asked to review those 36 cases and confirmed 11 related to Streetscene.
A further problem identified was that the Quick Quotes system itself prevented scrutiny.
Records were locked to the original user and could not be viewed by management without that user’s permission.
There was also no reliable way to link a quote to an actual contract award or to monitor how much had been spent against any given contract.
The Highways Network budget holder confirmed to auditors that Quick Quotes was used for approximately 85 per cent of all his spending.
The audit found that Flintshire’s own procurement team had flagged the same control failures in its June 2025 monitoring report.
“This suggests current actions to mitigate this risk have not been effective,” auditors wrote.
The Chief Officer for Streetscene and Transportation, Katie Wilby, requested the audit herself, asking for assurance that procurement controls were robust.
A Flintshire County Council spokesperson said: “The Council takes the findings of the audit report very seriously.
“The issues identified have been reviewed and an action plan has been developed.
“Steps have already been taken where necessary to strengthen controls and improve the contract management process.”
Since December 2025, the procurement team has issued quarterly reports to the Senior Management Team covering contracts with no evidence of documentation, outstanding project tasks, and the department’s pipeline of work due for procurement.
The Senior Management Team reviews those reports monthly, with a quarterly contract management review meeting introduced from January 2026 for all operational managers.
Mandatory training on contract procedure rules and the Proactis system is being introduced for all officers involved in procurement and contract management, with a completion deadline of November 2026.
Quick Quotes will be discontinued from April 2026 and replaced with a new template within Proactis that will require suppliers to provide insurance cover, licensing and health and safety documentation as part of the quoting process.
A briefing session for all operational managers on the new system is scheduled for 15 April.
The Governance and Audit Committee will receive the full audit and action plan on 17 March.
Check live fuel prices near you before you set off.
Spotted something? Got a story? Email news (@) deeside.com
NEW: Add Deeside.com as a preferred source on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Latest News
