COTSWOLD District Council has come under fire for failing to publish records of its spending for several months.

The whistleblower responsible for last year’s revelation that CDC had spent £19,000 of taxpayer’s money on a motivational magician has come forward again to reveal that the authority has not conformed to transparency guidelines set out by the government.

Under new rules introduced by Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles last year, local authorities must publish their spending records no later than 30 days after the end of the month.

At the time Mr Pickles said he hoped the data would be scrutinised by “an army of armchair accountants” who would hold their councils to account.

However, last week it was revealed that CDC had not published their data since September 2011.

The Standard reader said the rules were essential for local authorities to be held to account over the way they spend taxpayer’s money.

“It is disgraceful that we have a Tory council deliberately ignoring that edict as if local taxpayers have no right to know,” he said.

“The rules are mandatory and the government has issued instructions stating that the data must be published no later than 30 days after the end of each month – CDC is therefore seriously in breach and I trust the local government secretary will take firm action.”

The reader, who said he intends to continue scrutinising CDC’s records and did not want his identity revealed, said he believed the council had been reluctant to be transparent since the magician spending had come to light.

“Some local authorities don’t like the idea of their own taxpayers sniffing around and discovering what they are up to,” he said.

“The requirement to post the data promptly gives officials less time to do creative accounting and hide facts. These long delays leave the system open to potential abuse and obfuscation.

“I hope that naming and shaming the council will force them to clean up their act and play fair with local taxpayers.”

Although the records have since been uploaded onto the CDC website, Cllr Paul Hodgkinson, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on CDC, described the delay as “disturbing”.

“We will be asking why it has been allowed to go on for three months without positive action to get the information out to the public,” he said.

“Since this is not the first breach of the transparency rules, I will be referring the Council's conduct to the Local Government Secretary, Eric Pickles, asking him to read the riot act to the Conservative administration.

“There is already a serious deficit in transparency at CDC and this makes the situation worse.”

A spokesman from CDC said the council always aims to publish spending data within 30 days, but that this is not always possible.

“There is no statutory requirement to publicise the data within this timescale and officers are mindful that their top priority is to ensure suppliers and customers are paid on time and various other statutory returns are completed in line with rigorous deadlines,” he added.

“This means that there can sometimes be a delay in the publication of the monthly local spending data because the task has a lower priority.”

He added that CDC has not received any additional government funding to help officers with the extra workload arising from publicising this data.