“VANITY” on the part of Worcester City’s board has caused an independent scrutiny of the club’s financial state not to go ahead.

That’s the view of Worcester City Supporters’ Trust secretary Rob Crean who has slammed the club’s bosses for making “unacceptable” changes to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Crean said the trust offered City’s chiefs an “olive branch” by paying Nick Igoe, of Supporters Direct, to carry out a “comprehensive” business review of the cash-strapped Midland League Premier Division outfit.

A trust statement said they presented the club with an NDA which outlined the scope of work and a schedule of information needed to perform the review.

But they said City's directors did not sign the agreement and instead issued a different NDA which Crean felt tried to tie the hands of the trust's members.

“The main sticking point was we made an agreement to say that no confidential information can be leaked to the public which was correct,” Crean said.

“But the club wanted to change that NDA so that only certain members of the trust could see it.

“We are paying for the report for the benefit of everybody but they wanted to restrict who could see it on the trust's side and wanted to have first sight of it.

“Our fear was they would see the report, say they didn’t like what it said and say you can’t show it to anybody because you have signed a non-disclosure agreement.

“They were basically tying our hands which was unacceptable. Nick was completely amazed.

“It was free of charge for the club so they have looked a gift horse in the mouth due to their vanity.”

The proposal of a review came after the club posted losses in excess of £290,000 for the financial year up to the end of May 2017.

The trust’s board then declared the figures would need to be examined in order to “make any decision on the viability of the football club”.

But Crean claimed the club held back some financial information which they asked to obtain as part of the review.

“To make it a valid report we needed full disclosure of all the relevant documentation,” Crean said.

“When we asked for that they said there were bits we didn’t need to see which obviously reduces the value of the report.”

He added: “The review was an olive branch for the club to get some vision for the future.

“But it was stopped because they wouldn’t disclose all the information and were looking to potentially restrict the readers of the report which was unacceptable.”

In the trust statement, Igoe said: “I have undertaken a lot of these reviews on behalf of supporters’ trusts and never known a club be so difficult.

“The NDA would have ensured that absolute confidentiality was maintained and I am sure the review would have been a valuable exercise for all stakeholders in the club.”

Crean said the trust would continue to work closely with Supporters Direct and admitted Igoe would produce a “less detailed" report from the information they had got from the club.

The Worcester News approached City chairman Anthony Hampson and director Mark Wilcox for a comment but neither have responded.