Wales' top civil servant £40k payment 'not properly recorded'

Tens of thousands of pounds paid to the Welsh government's former top civil servant was not properly recorded, a spending watchdog has said.

Shan Morgan was paid for extra work before standing down in October 2021.

Auditor General Adrian Crompton said there was a lack of evidence about her £39,123 payment and who authorised it.

The Welsh government said she was treated no differently to any other civil servant.

The Conservatives called the report "troubling", while Plaid Cymru said other public sector workers would have not had been paid for working overtime without a timesheet.

The payment appears in the Welsh government's annual accounts.

Ministers were criticised earlier this year for being several months behind in meeting a legal deadline for publishing the document.

Mr Crompton also had reservations about grants to businesses and pension changes for senior clinicians.

The accounts say Dame Shan, the former permanent secretary, requested "partial retirement" in 2018.

However, as the demands of Brexit and the Covid pandemic began, she continued to work full-time hours and often at weekends.

The government agreed to give her time off in lieu, but it became "impossible" for her to take it when she handed over to her successor sooner than planned.

"As the original agreement had been for time off in lieu and not a monetary equivalent, the Welsh government felt that on value for money grounds, an offer to pay for circa half the time that would have been taken in lieu would be reasonable," the accounts said.

In his report, Mr Crompton said: "The Welsh government did not keep contemporaneous records of its reasons for making the payment, the rationale for the amount paid or evidence of who authorised the payment.

"I have therefore been unable to satisfy myself that the payment was properly authorised in accordance with the framework of authorities governing the expenditure and whether the expenditure was incurred for the purposes intended by the Senedd."

Welsh Conservative finance spokesman Peter Fox said: "It is troubling to see tens of thousands of pounds of public money get paid out for a former top civil servant but not one person or one piece of evidence is able to explain why.

"For the Welsh government's records to be qualified like this is highly irregular and poor record-keeping to this extent demonstrates a serious problem."

Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru spokesman for finance and local government, argued there would be "many other public sector workers that worked flat out during the height of the pandemic and way over their hours".

He added: "It's important that the Welsh government does not allow one rule for one and another rule for the others."

A Welsh government spokesman said: "The former permanent secretary did not receive anything that she was not entitled to and was treated no differently to any other civil servant."

It said the payment met its rules on managing public money.