Admin blunders cost cash-strapped east London council up to 200,000 in lost income

"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."

"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."

"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."

Newham Council's commercial waste service failed to issue bills and invoices to some customers for up to five years, resulting in approximately £200,000 of missed revenue. Some customers had not received invoices since 2020 and others had waste collected for up to three years without payment. Operational failures included invoices not being raised or issued incorrectly, mismatched records between the customer management and finance systems, and manual re-entry of customer changes into two separate systems. Misclassification of customers led to outdated contract rates. Weak governance, unclear team roles, and lack of checks during a system switchover allowed the errors to go undetected until an internal audit was requested.

Read at www.standard.co.uk