INDEPENDENT reviewers drafted in to look into procurement and contracts at City of York Council have praised improvements at the authority.

The Local Government Association (LGA) was brought in to look at the way the council gives out contracts, after a row over communications contracts worth tens of thousands of pounds.

That report has now been delivered to the city council, but authority bosses are being criticised for keeping a second report linked to the situation under wraps.

That second document - also from the LGA - looks at a contentious meeting held in February when councillors discussed worries over the way a contract for communications work - worth £170,000 - were agreed and paid.

Two councillors including the committee’s then chairman Neil Barnes walked out, others rejected a legal executive’s advice that they should keep the meeting behind closed doors, and an external auditor said the procurement situation “could not be any worse”.

The council says that report has to be kept private because it looks at the way individual councillors and staff behaved.

A spokesman said: “The report considers the conduct of councillors, members of staff and other people who attended the February meeting, which is why it is confidential.

“If there are allegations of wrongdoing which warrant further action, the matter would need to be referred to the standards committee or dealt with as an employment issue.

“Therefore it would be completely inappropriate to make the report public.”

Independent councillor Mark Warters has pushed the council leader David Carr for the report to be published, and has branded the decision to keep it under wraps “disgraceful”.

He told Cllr Carr he would never have taken the time to contribute to the report if he had known it would be kept secret.

The first LGA report says City of York has a good corporate procurement function and it praises the specialist procurement team as “well-led with knowledgeable and competent staff with a good understanding of business needs”.

The team behind that review visited York in June and spoke to 38 different people both inside and outside the council.

They said: “The peer challenge team was reassured to find that the council has a good corporate procurement function. Importantly, the council’s approach to non-compliance has been given ‘teeth’. However, as the council itself recognises, there is more to do in regard to procurement’s enabling role within the council’s developing commissioning framework and to address the residual negative perceptions of historical procurement issues.”