Just 14 hours into office, the new chief executive of Barnet Council gave his first ever press interview. REBECCA LOWE questions the boss on his plans for the authority – and asks how one officer could have let £2 billion of public money go astray.

Nick Walkley has two big problems on his second day in office: the resignation of treasury manager Patrick Towey after it emerged he deposited £2bn of council money in unapproved institutions over a two-year period, and the large number of black leather sofas littering his office.

“It’s all a bit 1980s bachelor pad, isn’t it?” he says, his voice tinged with a wry Huddersfield twang. “Can I please apologise for it? I feel quite nervous about it, really.

“But I’ve only been here for 24 hours, so hopefully I can do something about that.”

The other problem, however, may take a little longer to resolve. Between April 2006 and October 2008, 89 per cent – more than £2bn – of council deposits made by Mr Towey failed to meet approved credit rating criteria outlined in the Treasury Management Strategy (TMS).

The officer has now resigned and an independent investigation has been launched to discover how the blunders were allowed to slip through the net unnoticed.

According to the treasury department, Mr Towey failed to abide by the TMS because its ratings system was unnecessarily restrictive. The policy was consequently relaxed in March 2008 – and then re-tightened at the end of last year, following the Icelandic banks collapse.

The catalogue of errors has led to calls for council leader and resources committee chairman Mike Freer to resign. But Mr Freer has denied all responsibility for the matter and has received the support of the new chief executive.

“This is an officer failure that we need to deal with, and I can’t emphasise that enough,” says Mr Walkley.

“What is pretty unique about this case is that the officer drafting the strategy and making recommendations to members then contravened his own strategy.

"We can attempt to hypothesise as to why that might be, but those are the raw facts.”

Despite his avowal of support for Mr Freer, the new boss is adamant he is not going to be drawn into council politics.

“I don’t comment on what members’ views are on these issues, period. It’s something that’s really, really important to me. My job here is to act as head of paid services, to run an organisation and deliver effectively for the people out there.

“I do not yet have a view as to the who and how is to blame.”

The apparent contradiction in his stance notwithstanding, Mr Walkley’s grasp of the issue is impressive, as is his commitment to stamping his mark on the council as quickly as possible.

A tendency to slip into corporate jargon – the “necessary costs of the democracy of public money” and the “wider control environment” just a couple of classics touted during the hour-long interview – can be forgiven, perhaps, by the fact the dust has barely settled on his shiny bachelor-pad sofas before he invites me in to grill him.

One thing he is certain about is the need to “improve things”.

“I am pretty much restless about everything and want to make things better. It’s my trademark and why people find me really quite annoying at times.

“I believe that standing still is never an option given the pressures facing the public sector, and that we need to take some radical changes if we’re going to deliver for the people out there.”

It is easy, of course, to talk change; much harder to enact it – and, only 14 hours into office, the new boss is not yet clear exactly what steps need to be taken.

He has many vague ideas, however, based on his work in both local and central Government. Since September 2008 he has been on a secondment as the head of strategy for “local government efficiency, improvement and transformation” in the Department for Communities and Local Government. Prior to this, he was Barnet Council executive director for resources and assistant chief executive.

“I‘m going to be quite guarded here, as that is something for me to work with cabinet on,” he says of his ideas for the borough. “But I do think Barnet’s corporate plan sets out a very clear set of priorities for the coming year: a cleaner borough, a greener brough, a place that’s safer.

“I suppose the question for me is: how do we make sure all the money, whether it be council tax payers’ money or the money coming from national taxes to fund other services, is being used for the maximum benefit of the people of Barnet?”

Visit Rebecca Lowe's blog to read the full interview transcript.