On the Question of Bank Signatories

What do you call a man who signs cheques for Manorbier Community Council without proper authorisation?

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The answer is Clr Malcolm Calver.

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Every cheque that the Community Council pays out must be approved by a vote of the full Council and must be signed by two properly authorised councillors.

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The process of authorising councillors to sign cheques on behalf of the Council is twofold.

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Firstly a vote in Council is needed to approve the individuals as cheque signatories.

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The second step of the process is that the individual who is approved by the Council to become an authorised signatory must provide proof of identity to the bank and sign a bank mandate. This is a legal requirement on all banks.

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We now find out that, for several years, Clr Malcolm Calver has been signing cheques drawn on the Community Council bank account without being properly mandated to do so.

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The bank has no record of Clr Calver ever completing the legal requirements necessary for being approved as a signatory by them.

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I’m sure that if any of my readers were asked to become cheque signatories for an organisation of which they were members they would make very certain that all the legal requirements were in place before they started signing any cheques.

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Apparently Clr Calver doesn’t think such legal niceties are important enough to apply to him.

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You will not be surprised when I tell you that, shortly after the news of this very serious financial blunder had become public, the Chairman of Manorbier Community Council, Tony Wales, received a rather hurried email from Clr Calver stating the he no longer wished to be a cheque signatory for the Council. In this email he adopts his usual “It wasn’t me Guv it was three other blokes” approach to apportioning blame by implying that his decision was prompted by actions take by the Chairman. He has also visited the bank to tell them he is withdrawing as a signatory. They, in turn, no doubt told him his trip was unnecessary as he wasn’t a legal signatory anyway.

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Surely Clr Calver doesn’t think that opting out at this late stage is going to absolve him from his share of responsibility in this deplorable state of affairs?

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At this moment he will, no doubt, be busily compiling a list of all the people who, in his opinion, are responsible for his blunder and you can be certain his name won’t be on the list.

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Let us consider who should bear the blame.

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It could be argued that the bank has a degree of blame in this affair because they have been accepting these cheques for some years without query, but as anyone who has had a reasonable amount of dealings with banks will realise they don’t check signatures.

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Without doubt Clr Calver must shoulder his share of the blame. The Code of Conduct that all Councillors sign requires them to conduct themselves according to the law and not do anything to bring the Council into disrepute.

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I’m sure that to any reasonable person this affair would be seen as bringing the Council into disrepute.

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Whether signing cheques without proper authorisation is within the law I will leave others to judge.

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There is someone else who must also take a share of the blame. Until recently the Council had a Clerk who was also the Responsible Financial Officer. In this role she was required to look after the Council’s financial affairs included in which the proper control of Council banking played an important part. Since it only took two or three telephone conversations between the Chairman and the bank to discover this problem, why in the years she was carrying out the role of Responsible Financial Officer, when she was no doubt speaking to the bank on a weekly basis, did the Clerk never bring the matter to the attention of the Council?

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Now perhaps I may be allowed to pose a few questions that I don’t have the answers to.

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Were all the cheques sign by Clr Calver legal?

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What action might be open to the bank?

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What action might be open to the Council?

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Will the External Auditor feel obliged to intervene?

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Should Clr Calver be reported to the Ombudsman and Monitoring Officer?

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What do you think?