£50,000 council loan in spotlight (From York Press)

Councillors question York taxpayers’ cash being used to help fund South Yorkshire Credit Union

7:58am Tuesday 13th November 2012 in News By Richard Catton, richard.catton@thepress.co.uk

A DECISION to provide £50,000 of York taxpayers’ money to South Yorkshire Credit Union (SYCU) is back on the agenda after Conservative councillors questioned how such grants were monitored.

The handout from City of York Council will go towards helping SYCU establish a branch in York and Scarborough following the collapse, earlier this month, of North Yorkshire Credit Union (NYCU), and a former member of staff being arrested for fraud.

Now councillors George Barton, Paul Doughty and Paul Heal have called in the decision, meaning it could now be referred back to the council’s cabinet.

Coun Healey said he was concerned that a previous loan to NYCU looks set to be written off and questioned if the fallen bank had been monitored closely enough.

He said: “£100,000 has just gone pop. I strongly suspect there was a lack of engagement between council officers and the executive/cabinet in this loan of £100,000.

“This year we have spent a lot of time helping NYCU work through their issues but from 2009 to 2012 the council should have been taking steps to monitor the situation.”

Coun Healey said all political parties had backed the original £100,000 loan and he asked if the lack of monitoring of how partner organisations operated was happening “across the board”.

He said: “Let’s acknowledge something went wrong.”

The calling in will now go before the Corporate and Scrutiny Management Committee when it meets on Monday.

NYCU announced earlier this month that it was going into liquidation after six years since it was founded.

The not-for-profit financial co-operative, which had offices in Holgate Road, was open to anyone who lived, studied or volunteered on a regular basis in York or North Yorkshire.