 THE poor state of Liverpool City Council’s finances today sees it named the worst local authority in the country – for the second time in weeks. It comes as the Daily Post can reveal that former Culture Company chief executive Jason Harborow has made a complaint to a standards watchdog about the behaviour of council leader Warren Bradley and regenerat- ion leader Cllr Mike Storey. Liverpool has been given a one-star rating, down from two, in the Audit Commission’s annual Comprehensive Perfor- mance Assessment (CPA), the most important annual ranking on the progress of councils. Just one other council out of 149 in the country performed as badly – Rutland, in the East Midlands – but it was judged to be improving at a better rate than Liverpool, leaving the city with the worst result in England. There was better news else-where as Sefton improved from three to four stars, while St Helens, Halton, Warrington, Cheshire and Lancashire all remained on four. Wirral remained on two stars, and Knowsley was judged to be improving well, but its score is under review because the commission is still assessing its children and young people. Opposition councillors in Liverpool said the latest report, the third to slam the council in the past month, was yet more evidence of political mismanage-ment and failure to take tough financial decisions in the past. But the council said the city was “clearly not the worst” and its services had performed well. The main factors are the council’s failure to plug a £20m hole in the Capital of Culture budget, lack of financial planning and low levels of reserves. External experts are now to be drafted in to help Liverpool improve its governance and financial planning. Last week, the Audit Commis-sion said the council was the worst in the country for the way it spent money, on the day it was revealed Mr Harborow had been given a £230,000 pay-off to leave the council. In January, district auditor Tim Watkinson issued a stinging report into the council’s finances. He said he was concerned about the authority’s “weak” position and worried it could deteriorate in the short to medium term. Another Commission report will be released this month into an inspection last year. During the visit, inspectors found the standard of councillors’ behaviour was worse than in a “fledgling Eastern European democracy”. Today’s report says Liverpool has continued to make improve-ments to many key services such as education and social care, while addressing poor recycling rates and the condition of hous-ing stock, which will be transfer-red to a social landlord, Liverpool Mutual Homes, in April. But it also states: “Arrange-ments to challenge and secure value for money have not improv-ed sufficiently in the past year. “There is a significant risk the council will not be able to main-tain adequate levels of improve-ment given the financial pressur-es it is facing, most notably, but not exclusively, meeting Capital of Culture funding commitments. The continuing weaknesses in the council’s governance are also a concern.” | 
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