Brighton councillor accused of fraud after expenses inquiry

Councillor Alex Phillips was found by an independent inquiry to have overclaimed as much as £482.34 after making claims for childcare allowances beyond the timeframes permitted.

A report into her expenses claims found that she had overclaimed for 55 out of 74 childcare claims made over 18 months between October 2019 and March 2021.

The investigation also found that some claims were made without receipts, supporting information or what meeting she attended, but were approved by council officers regardless.

She has since apologised for the “small number of claims which were not in line with the council expenses policy” and repaid £490.

In a meeting of the council’s audit and standards committee, Conservative councillor Anne Meadows accused council officers of being “overfamiliar and too generous with money that was not theirs”.

She expressed dismay at how the council’s civic office told the inquiry they were unable to locate claim forms made by Cllr Phillips over the period being investigated.

Cllr Meadows: “Any respecting self-employed person knows documents must be kept for up to seven years, yet these claim forms mysteriously disappeared. If that’s not a cover-up, I don’t know what to call it.”

She also said that claims made by Cllr Phillips for childcare travel time to virtual meetings made during the pandemic “screams fraud to me”.

“No one was allowed to look after children unless they were children of emergency service workers - we were locked up,” she said.

Cllr Meadows also said: “She knew what she was claiming for and how and why - it was deliberate and calculated. That is the definition of fraud.

“No Conservative councillor on this council would ever get away with this blatant fraud of public money - that is my opinion.”

However, Councillor Gary Wilkinson - who chaired the meeting, said that the claims of fraud were “unsubstantiated” and that the report concluded that there was no evidence to suggest a systematic or deliberate attempt to deceive nor any attempts at dishonest misuse of public funds for personal gain.

Cllr Meadows also said that, while the amount Cllr Phillips overclaimed may seem small to some, “the Greens are constantly telling us and reminding us that every penny counts when running a big council like ours”.

The Argus first exposed overclaims by Cllr Phillips in March.

This newspaper discovered that £173.85 had been claimed between December 2019 and January 2021 for time before and after council meetings had taken place.

One claim - for a meeting of full council on July 23, 2020, was uncovered by The Argus to be over an hour and a half in excess of the meeting duration. The report confirmed The Argus' discovery and said, as the meeting was conducted virtually, travelling time could not be claimed.

Councillor Daniel Yates, who used to chair the audit and standards committee, said that people “should be pissed off” by the “disgraceful” situation.

He said: “This is more than uncomfortable in terms of accounting. It’s not right for accounting and it’s certainly not right for public money, and it’s not right that we, as an organisation, have a laissez-faire attitude to a bit of money that goes towards councillors - as if we’re all trying to grab as much as we can and it’s some sort of free for all.”

He also questioned why he had been “assured there were no discrepancies” when the issue of Cllr Phillips’ expenses was first raised.

Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis, the council’s legal chief, apologised and said he had been assured there were no issues with her expenses claims.

He told Cllr Yates: “I gave you that assurance as I was given that assurance - I asked the officers who were responsible for that to look at the situation and the feedback I got was that this was in order.”

Councillors at the meeting agreed unanimously to back recommendations outlined in the report, as well as calling for the ability for councillors to submit expenses forms electronically.