Investigations should be launched into how a council has been brought to the brink of bankruptcy – including into a controversial development deal – residents and councillors have urged.

External auditors have found ‘serious concerns’ about how funds at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council were managed in previous years.

These include a deal to sell Maidenhead Golf Course to a private developer that could now see the council out of pocket by tens of millions of pounds. Now one campaigner has said the deal is not only a threat to council finances – but also ‘a risk to local democracy’.

Andrew Hill – who has spent years scrutinising the deal – called on auditors to launch an ‘investigation into this governance failure and affront to democracy’.

The ‘serious concerns’ were outlined by auditing firm Grant Thornton to the Royal Borough in a letter published last week. Concerns included the risk that the council could be left in debt by the golf course deal.

An agreement with Cala Homes signed under the previous Conservative leadership in 2018 allows it to develop the land on the council-owned golf course.

The council built up debts of around £200 million expecting to be able to repay these with the money it hopes to get from the sale of the land. But the actual figure could be lower if Cala builds fewer homes than were originally planned.

Grant Thornton said this possibility poses a ‘significant risk to the council’s future financial stability’.

On top of that it was revealed that Maidenhead Golf Club, which leases the course from the council, had decided to end its lease early. The club is allowed to remain there until the end of 2025, but the council must pay it a sum of £15.9 million for the early exit sooner than planned – an extra expense to this year’s budget.

Mr Hill and councillors asked if council staff had been prepared for these risks at a meeting of its audit and governance committee on Monday, September 9. They also asked about the progress of work to catch up three years’ worth of balance sheet reconciliations that had not been carried out by previous finance staff.

The process involves matching spending records with the money in the council’s accounts. The discovery earlier this year that this work hadn’t been done led the council to seek a bailout from the government, which it is still negotiating.

Executive director of resources Elizabeth Griffiths said the council had not expected the golf course to end its lease before the end of 2025.

She also praised her staff for their work to catch up on the undone reconciliations, which she said took a ‘huge amount of effort’ but was nearly complete.

She added that she couldn’t explain why her predecessor – who she replaced last year – had not done this work.

Councillor Neil Knowles said there should be a ‘public inquiry’ into what had gone wrong in previous years. He said: “I would like to know exactly who’s to blame. Generally that’s what people want to know – who did it, and who’s responsible?”