Council failed to issue bills to customers of its commercial waste collection service for up to five years, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter

A Newham bin and (inset) Terence Paul, chair of the audit and governance committee

A string of admin errors has cost Newham Council up to £200,000 in lost income, the authority has revealed.

The council failed to issue bills and invoices to some customers of its commercial waste collection service over a period of up to five years.

It said that this meant “approximately £200k in revenue has been missed”.

Newham’s commercial waste service collects and disposes of rubbish for businesses, schools, and community organisations in the borough for a fee.

A report to the council’s audit and governance committee revealed that some customers hadn’t received an invoice since 2020. It said others had had their waste collected for up to three years without paying for it.

The report said this meant this was due to “operational errors such as invoices not being raised or being issued incorrectly”.

Records on the waste service’s customer management system also weren’t matched with those on its separate finance system to ensure accurate billing.

Staff in the commercial waste team had to enter changes to customer records – such as bin sizes or how often their waste was collected – on to their system.

The same information then had to entered again into a separate system run by the council’s finance team. But this wasn’t always passed on between the two departments.

The report sats some customers were incorrectly classified in the finance system, meaning some customers were “billed outdated contract rates, resulting in lower-than-expected revenue collection”.

Additionally, a lack of checks during and after the switchover to a new system meant some services went unbilled and undetected, which “delayed revenue collection”.

The report said the errors weren’t picked up due to “weak governance structures”.

It said that “unclear roles” between the commercial waste, finance, and debt collection teams added to “poor oversight” and “a lack of accountability”.

The errors were only discovered when the commercial waste team request an internal audit following a changeover in staff and systems.

Terence Paul, chair of the audit and governance committee, thanked the department for requesting the audit.

But he called on it to do more to collect the missing £200,000. He said this would be “only fair to the council tax payers”. The council faces a £53m black hole in its budget next year and is considering raising council tax by 9%.

Cllr Paul said: “For the resident out there – credit crunch, cost of living crisis, we might put the council tax up – they want to hear that you’ve got their back.

“Let’s just put it right. Let’s go and find some of that money.”

Council officers told the committee they had accounted for around £100,000 of the lost income – but said some had been written off.

One officer said that some invoices may also have been issued for services that customers had stopped receiving.

The report to the audit committee said the council was taking action to recover unpaid debts and stop services to customers with outstanding invoices.

It also said the waste, finance and debt teams had been working to reconcile the data on their systems and establish more defined roles and processes.

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