A council lost thousands of pounds of taxpayer cash after shelling out on a shipping container which failed to arrive.
Bridgend County Borough Council had paid 50 per cent of the cost of the container, amounting to £3,658.
But it never arrived - and a request for the final 50 per cent of the payment was rejected.
The transaction has been identified as fraud, according to a letter sent to the Labour-run council by Audit Wales.
Bridgend County Borough Council has lost thousands of pounds after a shipping container it ordered didn't arrive (file photo)
REUTERS
In the letter, a case of "actual, suspected, or alleged fraud" affecting the local authority was identified regarding the shipping container.
It read: "The council ordered a shipping container which did not arrive and paid 50 per cent upfront (£3,658).
"This has been identified as a fraud and a request for the final 50 per cent payment was rejected."
The council's Governance and Audit Committee said in its most recent meeting that it had made attempts to contact the company from where the shipping containers were purchased and recover the money, but was unsuccessful.
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It has not been made clear what the shipping container ordered by the council (pictured) was intended to be used for
The committee described it as an "isolated incident".
It has not been identified what the shipping container was intended to be used for.
Councillor Richard Granville, who chairs the Development Control Committee, pointed out that the local authority had placed a number of containers in a car park in Porthcawl.
The collection of five shipping containers have been converted to be used by start-up businesses.
Steven Easterbrook, an independent councillor for Bridgend Central, said the incident was embarrassing.
"It is very much on the Bridgend County Borough Council website and our social media that we are bringing attention to shipping containers and this again is a bit embarrassing for us," Easterbrook told the committee.
He added that the council needed to be "a lot more careful" with how it approached situations in the future.
Separately, a mobile coffee shop owner has been told she must pay more than £3,000 in street licensing fees to Cheltenham Borough Council despite the authority's failure to collect payments for a year.
The council said this issue was due to an administrative error.
Tanya Baxter, who operates Tan's Coffee Box from a converted horse box, discovered the council's mistake when she reapplied for her licence in June.
Officers at the local authority realised they had not been collecting her fees for the previous 12 months.
While the council waived the unpaid fees from the past year, they insisted Baxter must pay £3,298.32 for the upcoming trading year.
The council's error affected a small independent business that serves the local community, particularly patients from nearby Cheltenham General Hospital - and as a result, more than 300 people signed a petition demanding the fees continue to be waived.
The licensing committee then voted unanimously to reject the request to waive the fees.