Tower Hamlets Council has still not reported to councillors on its investigation into a £951,000 home care overpayment, almost a year after telling its auditor it aimed to finish by December 2025. In a report dated 15 September 2026, Ernst & Young said: "At the date of this report, neither Project Winter/Autumn nor Operation NextWage has been reported to members." It is the third year running that EY has found a significant weakness in how the council conducts internal investigations.
PwC's forensic review, received by the council's Audit Committee in March 2025, found £951,000 paid to a home care supplier between 20 July and 24 August 2021 for care between 19 July and 29 August 2021. A further £927,000 was paid to the same supplier on 5 October 2021 for what appeared to be the same period, as the council moved to paying in arrears. The council's brokerage team could not explain why both sets of payments were made. On 2 May 2025, "in absence of evidence to suggest otherwise", PwC concluded the £951,000 was an overpayment and recommended that the council seek to recover it. The council papers reviewed do not say whether it has been recovered.
The supplier, which the council's chronology calls Supplier A, had been shortlisted as a preferred supplier in the council's 2023 retender of home care, and PwC's further work on the payments was due to be finished "ahead of the award of the new contracts". PwC also found overbilling and underbilling across the contract, a net error rate of 1.52 per cent, which the council estimated as about £140,000 a year at current spending. That is an indicative estimate, not a confirmed loss. None of these findings establishes deliberate wrongdoing.
The forensic work was also meant to establish whether council staff had done anything wrong. EY's interim report of 16 November 2025 said the specialists reported in April 2025 that "they were unable to progress further due to the non-receipt of requested documentation". Officers then said they believed no wrongdoing by staff had been found, but "no supporting documentation or clear rationale has been provided to substantiate how this conclusion was reached". At the April 2025 Audit Committee the specialist confirmed it had not been engaged again, officers said internal audit would take over, and the Head of Internal Audit said it was not appropriate for that team.
The second investigation, Operation NextWage, concerns alleged inappropriate procurement and payment approvals involving undeclared conflicts of interest. EY said it "was not identified following proactive, or reactive work by the Council, it was however, brought to the organisation's attention following a police investigation". EY could not complete its audit work on either matter for 2023/24 or 2024/25, and both audit opinions referred to them as unresolved. In October 2025 EY formally told the council that "the lack of progress by management" was preventing it from reaching conclusions.
EY also criticised how the council investigates. It said the council applies "a high bar of proof for investigations, commensurate with that of a police investigation instead of applying a balance of probabilities approach", that investigations focus on substantiating individual allegations rather than wider failures of control, and that it was unclear who oversaw investigations or which committee should hear about them. In November 2025 it counted ten significant weaknesses and four statutory recommendations across the council.
In response, the council blamed staff departures, including a lead investigator, and outstanding replies from external parties, and said the investigations were being progressed "with the aim of concluding them by December 2025". It rejected any suggestion that it failed to impose sanctions where wrongdoing was proved, and said it would seek prosecution where the evidential threshold was met.
That date passed. EY's September 2026 report acknowledged new appointments, including a Director of Compliance, and an external review of the investigations team between May and July 2026, but concluded that the significant weakness "remains in 2025/26" and that the statutory recommendation raised in February 2025 "remains active". At the Audit Committee on 24 September, EY's representative, Mr Reid, said such matters should be brought to the committee "on a timely basis and that this had not happened yet". Satinder Jas, the director of compliance, said the investigations were active and that a report on completed investigations would come to the next meeting.
That meeting is on 4 November. Its published agenda contains no public report on completed investigations; the only related item, "Fraud Investigations – Activity Update", is restricted from the public. The council is led by its executive mayor, Lutfur Rahman, elected again in May 2026, with Steve Halsey as chief executive, and has been under Ministerial Directions since January 2025 following a Best Value Inspection. The council's chronology says whistleblower allegations about the supplier, which remain unproven, were sent to the Mayor and reported to the chief executive and Section 151 officer in November 2023.
The home care procurement is also in court. Apasen, a registered charity that bid for contracts, is challenging the council's June 2025 decision to make urgent interim awards to four other providers but not to Apasen. On 28 August 2026 Roger ter Haar KC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, refused the council's application to strike out the part of the claim seeking to set those contracts aside. He said what makes a contract award notice inaccurate "is highly arguable and not decided as yet by authority", and that it was at least arguable that a notice claiming urgency would be inaccurate if the urgency was not factually well founded. This was a preliminary ruling, not a finding that the contracts were unlawful.