Whistleblowing procedure allowing council employees to raise concerns 'without fear' being reviewed

The matter came before the audit and corporate governance committee as part of the anti-fraud, bribery and corruption annual report on Thursday.

The authority is helping charity Public Concern at Work assess a new whistleblowing 'benchmarking tool'.

It is due to enable the council to measure its arrangements against best practice and benchmark them against arrangements in other organisations.

The outcomes from the ongoing assessment will be used in 2018-19 ‘to identify any improvements required’ to the council's procedure.

The schools' whistleblowing procedure is also currently being reviewed to ensure that it reflects recent changes to safeguarding reporting guidelines.

In 2017-18, the internal audit team received 11 referrals via the whistleblowing reporting line, which were investigated according to the level of evidence provided.

The process is in place to allow council employees, and individuals it works in partnership with, to highlight fears about any aspect of the authority's work.

It enables concerns over malpractice or wrongdoing to be raised ‘without fear of victimisation, discrimination or harassment’.

During the meeting, members also discussed the council’s risky commercial investments.

Cllr Steve Parish said: “The Government wants to rein in councils in terms of this sort of stuff and I am not sure where that leaves us for future schemes.”

Shortly after, the authority’s controversial deal to buy Birchwood Park offshore to ‘avoid tax’ was raised.

Last September, it completed its controversial purchase of the site for £211 million.

Cllr Colin Froggatt said: “We still don’t know, if it went on the open market, whether it would have gone for the estimated £183 million – that was the estimated market value.”

Speaking on the decision to buy the business park offshore, he added: “It is a question of whether we are demonstrating ethical values but that is open to debate.”