The demand comes after East Renfrewshire Council was rocked by a series of blunders, which saw £213,000 written off as irrecoverable and the new Barrhead High School rocket in price by £5 million.

However leader Councillor Jim Fletcher said any demand made by the Tory leader Gordon McCaskill was “a bit rich”.

An internal audit investigation is also being carried out to discover how the council allowed £1.2 million to be overpaid to third party companies and care providers by the authority’s care arm, the Community Health and Care Partnership.

Speaking to The News, Cllr McCaskill said: “We are being asked to believe that not only do our CHCP Finance Department have no idea what they are doing, but that no one else’s finance departments have any idea what they are doing either and that large sums of public money simply vanished into thin air.

“At the same time, the political leadership of the Council either had no idea what was going on, or did know and did nothing about it. In either case, their position is untenable. I would expect them to do the honourable thing before it is forced upon them.

“The real tragedy is money that could have been used to help the most vulnerable has instead been helping absolutely no one.

However, council leader Jim Fletcher hit back, saying: “Firstly, it is a bit rich of any Tory to adversely comment on the transfer of Bonnyton House from Local Govt control to the Voluntary or Private sectors. Any changes to the status of Bonnyton House is driven by the need for ERC to shave a further £25 million pounds from it revenue budget in the next three years. These further cuts to the budgets of councils are as a direct result of cuts imposed by the Tory Chancellor George Osborne.” “Turning to the CHCP budget, we have moved from a system of block payments and end of year reconciliations to organisations that look after elderly and vulnerable people, to a tighter system of payments for individuals in receipt of care. Any temporary overpayments to organisations that deliver care to elderly and vulnerable people have now been recovered. There is no loss whatsoever to the CHCP or to ERC taxpayers.” East Renfrewshire Council had been paying charges to an external service provider for a person who had been dead for a substantial period of time. When an audit investigation had already expressed concerns about the financial management of this service provider, East Renfrewshire CHCP launched its own investigation at costs yet to be determined.

The council reported that they had lost but since recovered £1.2 million which had been overpaid to service providers over a long period of time.