Call for 'full inquiry' into end of Salvation Army contract

It comes after an internal audit report into the circumstances surrounding the ending of the £95,000-a-year contract was apparently pulled at the last minute.

The Press understands that the report – which was to have been presented at a meeting of the council’s audit and governance committee on Wednesday – was withdrawn because there are concerns about whether it provides a ‘comprehensive enough picture of events’.

The report, while outlining some of the circumstances surrounding the ending of the contract, also criticised members of the council’s own health, housing and adult social care scrutiny committee for inviting Salvation Army staff who had been affected by the cancellation of the contract to speak out.

It was the scrutiny committee which requested an audit report into the ending of the contract, after hearing from Salvation Army staff members.

But the report accused councillors on the committee of ‘becoming entangled in contractual arrangements’ and of conduct that was ‘at the very least highly irregular’.

It added: “Scrutiny (committee) was not an appropriate place to undertake public speculation about expired contracts with former contractors’ operational staff.”

The Salvation Army's Charlie Malarkey doing an early-morning check on rough sleepers in York (Image: Stephen Lewis)

Cllr Christian Vassie, the scrutiny committee’s vice-chair, has now called for a ‘full independent inquiry’ into the circumstances surrounding the ending of the Salvation Army contract.

He said his scrutiny committee had first requested a report as long ago as October 'in the wake of revelations about the Salvation Army being give just minutes to agree to a contract at the end of September'.

"So (there have been) four months’ of obfuscation and delay and now we are told that Audit and Governance scrutiny are not allowed to discuss the issue either," he said. 

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“I believe the time has come for a full independent inquiry as to what has happened here to understand how this mess, and the reputational damage it has caused, occurred.”

The city council announced last September that it would not be renewing the Salvation Army’s contract.

Instead, the authority said it would be using £260,000 of extra government funding over the next two years to expand its own rough sleepers service under a new homelessness strategy.

But the announcement was made so abruptly that the Salvation Army itself only learned that the contract was not to be extended in a call from The Press.

The Salvation Army's Charlie Malarkey with rough sleepers in York just before Christmas (Image: Stephen Lewis)

To make matters worse, an attempt to grant the charity a one-month contract extension to allow for a transition period came to nothing – because the council sent the contract out too late.

Cllr Vassie said: “We know that the number of rough sleepers has increased over this winter.

"We have heard a whole series of increasingly implausible explanations as to what has happened including, most recently, the excuse that an email failed to reach the Salvation Army for reasons unknown.

“Enough is enough. We cannot have the city council marking its own homework; it is clear we need a proper independent audit of what has happened here.”

The Press has approached City of York Council for comment.

What the pulled council report said

The pulled report into the circumstances surrounding the ending of the city council’s rough sleeping contract with the Salvation Army made a number of assertions – as well as questioning the role of councillors in trying to get to the bottom of what had happened.

It said:

- “The 2018 … contract (with the Salvation Army) was a response to high levels of rough sleeping in the city. It provided for a minimum of one street walk per week and drop-in sessions for rough sleepers.”

- In parallel with this, the report said the council was piloting a new council ‘Navigator’ service. This service ‘created a dedicated CYC team to undertake more intensive personalised interventions with rough sleepers and those at risk of homelessness, and interfaced directly into our services for Housing First, mental health support and substance misuse’.

- The report stated that ‘it was the Navigator model that delivered long term resettlement results’ – implying that the Salvation Army programme was less effective.

- The Salvation Army contract was originally due to end in March 2023, but a six-month extension was agreed to the end of September - As the end date for this extension approached, the report said, ‘officers …provided advice that the services commissioned under (the Salvation Army) contract were no longer needed due to the… alternative Navigator model.”

- Nevertheless, a one-month extension of the Salvation Army contract was proposed to allow for a smooth handover. But the report admits: “The communication of the potential extension was subject to technical difficulties in that the Salvation Army did not receive the email containing document and associated information due to a major IT outage.”

- The report insists that, in order to comply with procurement law, if the council had wished to continue with an external contract such as that with the Salvation Army, ‘a competitive exercise must have been followed to achieve value for money and evidence the best quality service’

- The report criticised councillors on the scrutiny committee for inviting Salvation Army staff to talk to the committee. “Scrutiny was not an appropriate place to undertake public speculation about expired contracts with former contractors operational staff,” the report said.