QUESTIONS are still being asked about the "dummy money" the county council claims was included in a recent auditors' report.

Phil Hobson, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Monmouthshire County Council, has questioned the council's decision to write-off £2m of uncollected council tax.

But Graham Down, cabinet member for finance and budgetary control at MCC, said previously the figures included "dummy money," which had been used to test a new computer system.

The Free Press has asked on several occasions for confirmation on how much is being counted as dummy money.

In a statement Graham Down, deputy leader at MCC, later claimed there was a misunderstanding over the 'missing' money, which had arisen as a result of a budgeting exercise in which £2.417m was calculated as bad debt.

He says there has been a delay in recovering the outstanding debt, but expects the majority of the money to be collected during the coming financial year.

"This is a common accounting procedure," explained Councillor Down.

"It's like balancing your household budget, knowing that you will have an electricity bill to pay at the end of the quarter but not knowing to the nearest penny how much that bill is going to be and how much of your income you will have left to spend afterwards."

Responding to the councillor's statement Cllr Hobson said: "This only confirms what we have maintained all along: there was no such thing as ''dummy money' or 'bogus invoices'. The £2 million in question was real money that the council failed to collect and is prepared to write off.""

Cllr Hobson claims officers at Monmouthshire County Council have checked the figures and now indicate that the money is real and are awaiting official confirmation.

"We were always sure that the auditors' report, which cost £272,000 to produce, was accurate," continued Cllr Hobson.

"It must be of serious concern to council taxpayers in Monmouthshire that a substantial amount of money is set to be missing from the system and that comments were made that our figures were totally inaccurate, when it now appears we were right to highlight this issue and insist of an explanation. In all, these claims were misleading."

Cllr. Hobson added: "We will be looking into the claims that the figures included ''bogus invoices'' further. This isn't over yet."