Deloitte Touche Report

In September 2002, at the request of two concerned leaseholders, the District Auditor
commissioned auditors Deloitte Touche to examine the process by which Camden Home Ownership
Services bills leaseholders for services and capital works for their homes.

When the report appeared we were appalled see just how bad the situation was. It exposed unethical
and irregular billing and accounting practices,including invoices based on estimates that were never
reconciled to actual costs, invoices for works not actually carried out or for works of unacceptable
quality, and invoices for various services,such as electricity and heating, which Camden could not identify.

Some of the key findings were :

• no accurate listing of Camden's property database and of services (such as lifts, boilers and meters) to individual leaseholder properties
• no accurate and/or complete coding of true costs at source
• no procedure to match actual caretaking hours to invoices sent out for this service
• no audit trail back to primary records and a failure to keep all original documentation
to confirm invoices.

In March 2002, leaseholders had been invited to a meeting with the Best Value Inspector and many
complained about unreasonable, erroneous and unjust invoices issued by the Housing Department.
Unfortunately the auditor took no notice of our complaints and gave Camden a clean bill of health.

However, the Deloitte Touche “Value for Money Study” dated January 2003 reinforced leaseholders’
complaints. It said that ‘actual accounts are often significantly different from the original tendered
cost but there is no evidence of reconciliation of tender costs to actual costs.’ The report further
confirmed that Capital Works were often of poor quality and that unnecessary work was carried out.

The Deloitte Touche report followed up its April 1999 ‘Value for Money Study on Lessee Charges’ in
which it identified very poor standards of accounting for leaseholder-related costs. Some improvement
had been made in the intervening four years, but the Council's reception of the report at the meeting
of the Executive Council on 12th March 2003 indicated complacency about the reforms needed if proper standards of accounting were to be applied to the true costs of Camden's housing.

To our astonishment, there was much self-congratulation and mutual patting of backs about the report.

Worse still, leaseholders were criticised for not wanting to pay large bills, though no one seemed
to have considered the reasons for this – failure to carry out work to a reasonable standard,
to consult properly or to keep proper accounts.

The extent of the inaccuracy of leaseholder bills is not fully known, but Camden’s HOSS accounting process appears to contravene the rules of Corporate Governance. The Deloitte Touche audit highlighted a number of continuous and serious accounting failures and the question of incompetence or deception remains open.

Further details on this report are available in the member's area of the site