Specialist councillors with financial knowledge are essential, if a repeat of the Icelandic banking disaster is to be avoided, a top council leader has warned. Merrick Cockell, leader of Kensington and Chelsea RBC, told a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester that understanding treasury and pension issues was crucial to ensure councils avoided the debacle, which saw councils lose than £900m. Had councillors been able to understand where pension funds were spread, he said he believed many of the problems could have been avoided. ‘Some of those skills are difficult to find. We're not the experts, we're the representatives of the people, but we need to know which questions to ask. We've got to hold our officers to account,' he said. Kensington and Chelsea has brought in a team of head-hunters to recruit people to become councillors who had the specialist knowledge of financial issues.
