Independent audit of PCC Stansfeld's expenses is published.

The Thames Valley Police & Crime Panel are meeting this coming week and their agenda / papers have been uploaded to net. You can access them here. Many readers will also be interested in reading the independent audit concerning Mr Stansfeld's expenses.

The audit paper is here.

I have done a detailed analysis of the paper which I will put in another blog post (it is rather long!) But here are the headlines:

• He still maintains that it is impractical for him to drive himself around Thames Valley (2200 square miles) when his Conservative PCC colleagues in Dyfed Powys (4188 square miles), Devon & Cornwall (3961 square miles) and North Yorkshire (3200 square miles) all drive themselves. (I phoned their offices and verified this on Friday). What makes Mr Stansfeld so different?
• He will be paying back £142 of expenses now judged not to be correct
• He does do his own expenses! (which I think conflicts with what he said in his verbal statement at the last meeting of the PCP. You can read his verbal statement here 
• He may have used the car for private use before the chauffeur arrived
• The chauffeur has already resigned (due to a "change in person circumstances")
• His use of Hungerford Office is unverifiable & so HMRC may be wanting some more money depending on whether it is a temporary place of work or not (although reference is made to the possible existence of security fob access information that the auditor was not given)
• Many of the arrangements seem pretty patchy to me (the log book in the car needs to be made more detailed etc…) and perhaps the OPCC CEO needs to be questioned further on this & related matters.
• And there is more...

Now off to listen to Bill Heine's interview of Mr Stansfeld on Radio Oxford.