A government quango which rules on whether people should be admitted to hospital for psychiatric treatment has been criticised by a financial watchdog for the way in which it is run.
Robert Black, the Auditor General for Scotland, said the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland Administration (MHTSA), which employs 80 staff and costs £8.4m a year to run, needed to improve "to meet good governance standards".
In particular, he was critical of the organisation's failure to set up a board to run it. Similar concerns had been raised in 2005-6, the year in which the MHTSA was set up.
Mr Black set out his findings in a report which will be considered today by the Scottish Parliament's Audit Committee.
The report said: "The 2005-6 audit of MHTSA included a review of its governance and accountability framework. This review concluded in August 2006 that appropriate governance was not in place.
"In August 2007, the auditor completed follow-up work on governance there remained a need to improve to meet good governance standards." He added: "There was no formal board in place."
A spokeswoman for the MHTSA said: "Adverts for chairmanship and membership of the board will appear in the press next month, and we would expect the board to be established in February."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article