Council Leader breached Code of Conduct

The Public Services Ombudsman has ruled that Cllr Kevin Madge breached the Councillors' Code of Conduct when he used council resources to issue the now infamous Sainsbury's press release accusing MP Jonathan Edwards and Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM of "deliberately trying to sabotage" the development of a doctor’s surgery, health centre and care home in Cross Hands and school improvements to Ysgol Maes yr Yrfa.

Having undertaken a formal investigation into the complaint against the Labour Council Leader, the Ombudsman stated the press release contained both inaccurate and misleading statements; that authority resources should not have been used; and that the council leader has “walked a very fine line”.

In the view of the Ombudsman, Councillor Madge used, or authorised others to use, the resources of the authority improperly for political purposes, although he is not recommending that any further action be taken.

Bearing in mind how libel has been at the top of the council's news agenda recently, it is ironic to say the least that Cllr Madge's press release was about as close to the textbook definition of defamation as you can get. He can count himself lucky that neither of the two Plaid politicians is likely to take the matter to court, although if they did the council leader would at least have the comfort of knowing that his court costs would be picked up by the council tax payer.

A spokesman for Mr Thomas and Mr Edwards said they welcomed the findings of the Ombudsman’s investigation into Councillor Madge’s comments and his improper use of public resources to carry out a politicised attack on them, and called for Councillor Madge to issue a full public apology.

The spokesman for Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM and Jonathan Edwards MP said:

“Nobody goes into politics expecting not to receive a couple of low blows from your opponents, especially when your main rival is the Labour party. However, at the heart of any democratic system there has to be political integrity – especially from a leader of a public authority. 

“Mr Thomas and Mr Edwards therefore welcome the findings of the Ombudsman and believe his comments vindicate entirely their complaint against the Leader of Carmarthenshire County Council.

“Given the conclusions of the Ombudsman, Councillor Madge would do well to consider whether he is surrounding himself with the right advisors. 

“In the meantime, however, he should issue a full public apology for the misuse of public resources and for his inaccurate and misleading statements.”

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Ever obliging, Cneifiwr is happy to respond to a request for a picture from Anon. Somehow, I don't think he got this tan in Garnant, do you readers?

Planning matters: enforcement Carmarthenshire style

Mrs Trisha Breckman and her partner may have thought that Carmarthenshire County Council's belated and very grudging acceptance of the report by the Public Services Ombudsman on their treatment at the hands of the council in the planning dispute with their neighbouring farmer/road haulier and sometime scrap dealer had brought the whole sorry saga to an end.


Readers will recall that it took the council 7 months to get round to discussing the ombudsman's report, albeit behind closed doors at a meeting of the planning committee. The full council never got an opportunity to discuss the way in which the matter had been handled because the relevant report was tacked on at the end of the annual budget meeting, and it was voted through along with a truckload of other reports without discussion.

Having observed the way in which the council downplayed the matter, dragged its feet and made it obvious that it was not at all happy with the Ombudsman's findings, Mrs Breckman's neighbour appears to have concluded that he had no need to worry about any comeback from that quarter.

A large wooden "privacy" board which had been put up by Mr Thomas was removed just within the 3 month deadline imposed by the Ombudsman. This meant that the council did not have to pay Mrs Breckman and her partner £1,000 in compensation for failing to enforce planning regulations. Subsequently the old removals van which had been parked where the trailer now stands was taken away in early November. All seemed well.

Then on 1st March this year a huge trailer belonging to an articulated lorry was brought in to replace the board and removals van. This is now the view from Mrs Breckman's window:



A second view taken from a public road may help to put things into perspective. Of all the places that the trailer could have been parked, apparently there was only room for it outside Mrs Breckman's cottage:

Unsurprisingly, Mrs Breckman has been back in touch with the council, who have replied that they can do nothing about it because the trailer is not a fixed structure and is being used for agricultural purposes (it contains a couple of bales of hay).

Previously the field and the removals van was home to two pigs. Judging from the height of the articulated trailer, any pigs now in the field will have to be able to fly.

A Victory Parade

The Local Authorities (Indemnities for Members and Officers) Order 2006 and the Welsh Government's accompanying guidelines are clear that Welsh councils may not use public funds to enable council officers and councillors to pursue libel claims through the courts, and there is a long-standing convention that councils themselves may not bring actions for defamation.

So when the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council brought a counter-claim against blogger Jacqui Thompson and won punitive damages of £25,000 against her on the back of it, the question arises of whether he was doing this in a personal capacity or as an arm of the council.

While the trial was in progress, anyone up and about in Carmarthen in the early hours may have seen two shiny black Mercedes belonging to the council heading east. Comfortably ensconced in the black leather interior were the chief executive himself, his wife and various council functionaries, including the authority's Head of Law and, bizarrely, the manager of the council's press office.

The limos purred along the M4 to Swansea, where the worthies boarded a train with first class return tickets for London.

The press office was quick to issue a press release welcoming the judge's verdict on 15 March, and the chief executive gave interviews to local newspapers.

Clearly that was not enough. It is understood that some councillors are now being fed with extracts from the court transcript, although for what purpose it is not clear, and yesterday, 10 days after the verdict, an article appeared as the centrepiece on the council's web site giving links to the text of the judgement.

All of this is in stark contrast to the council's extreme reluctance to tell its councillors and the public whenever the Ombudsman for Public Services issues reports which show the authority in a less than flattering light.

It may be a coincidence, but Mr James told the Carmarthen Journal in his interview that county councillors would all be given training in defamation law to prepare them for the broadcasting of council meetings.

The training will no doubt emphasise the dire consequences that may await all those who speak out of turn, and Jacqui Thompson will almost certainly be held up as a warning.

This will not be a problem for those councillors who rarely if ever speak in council meetings, but it may well be enough to convince others that the best policy is to keep quiet as well and leave all the talking to Mr James.

Who knows, perhaps Mr James may next decide that to drive his message home, a parade of open topped buses around Carmarthen and Llanelli is appropriate. He can be sure of a warm welcome from council tax payers, that's for sure.

Grillo - Poisoned Waters

Somewhat to the surprise and certainly to the disappointment of some of our council's top brass, the Welsh Government has overturned the planning inspector's decision to approve a mixed housing and retail development on the heavily contaminated former Grillo zinc oxide works site at Burry Port.

Despite being on a C2 flood plain, Carmarthenshire County Council and the planning inspector felt that the benefits of regeneration and decontamination of the site outweighed the niggling nuisance of flood risk.

Decontamination of the site was expected to cost over £1 million, and the council was hoping that a private developer would foot the bill.

The Grillo site was to have accommodated up to 230 homes and up to 465 square metres of retail space.

Residents of Llanelli concerned about the Stradey Park development and all those worried about the council's plans for a new secondary school on a C2 flood plain at Ffairfach close to Llandeilo will no doubt be noting this decision with interest.

Difaterwch ac atgasedd

Wrth annerch y dorf ddaeth i Neuadd y Sir yng Nghaerfyrddin ddydd Sadwrn diwethaf i gyflwyno deiseb "Dw i eisiau byw yn Gymraeg", tynnodd Cadeirydd y Cyngor Sir, Siân Thomas, sylw at ddifaterwch ac atgasedd cynifer o gynghorwyr a swyddogion uwch yr awdurdod tuag at yr iaith Gymraeg. Arhosodd y prifweithredwr, arweinydd y Cyngor a'i ddwy ddirprwy arweinydd gartref gan brofi ei phwynt.

Ychydig o ddyddiau wedyn sefydlodd y Cyngor weithgor newydd i "ymchwilio i'r ffactorau sydd wedi effeithio ar y gostyngiad yn nifer y siaradwyr Cymraeg yn Sir Gaerfyrddin". Ceir disgrifiad o gylch gwaith y grŵp yma (dogfen uniaith Saesneg wrth gwrs).

A barnu'n ôl geiriau Kevin Madge (Llafur) wrth gyflwyno'r grŵp newydd, mae ei ddiffyg uchelgais llwyr yn amlwg:

"Mae'r ffigyrau hyn yn destun pryder ond nid taflu arian at hyn yw'r ateb. Gobeithio y gallwn wneud gwahaniaeth erbyn y Cyfrifiad nesaf a gwrthdroi rhai o'r tueddiadau hyn.”

Mewn geiriau eraill, wedi gwastraffu miliynau ar Eglwys Gymunedol Tywi (gwefan uniaith Saesneg er ei bod yn cael cymaint o arian cyhoeddus, gyda llaw), Parc y Scarlets, ceir moethus, "Newyddion Sir Gâr", ac yn y blaen, does yr un ddimai goch ar ôl i'r Gymraeg.

Heb newid agweddau'n sylfaenol, ac heb adnoddau newydd bydd gobaith Kevin Madge o wneud gwahaniaeth cystal â gobaith caneri.

Mae 'na sawl rheswm dros gefnogi syniad Adam Price o greu un cyngor i'r Fro Gymraeg, ac mae hanes Cyngor Sir Caerfyrddin yn ystod y degawd diwethaf yn un ohonynt.

What's On at the Odeon This Week

Dracula Returns

After attacks on his castle by a mob of peasants wielding torches and pitchforks, the Count is declared an innocent victim in the Gothic splendours of the Transylvanian High Court.

The film reaches a sickening climax as the Count tells assembled journalists that it had never been his intention to stifle the freedom of the press to report goings on at the castle, and reports to the contrary were all lies and spin.

"My reputation has been restored, and suggestions that I have sunk my fangs into the virginal flesh of the local press are baseless."

The Count added that he was considering donating his winnings to a worthwhile cause, such as bat conservation or a blood bank.

In the final scene the Count reminds the press and public that garlic and crucifixes are banned from the castle chamber before he heads off to the crypt for a well-deserved rest after what he said had been "a most stressful" time.

Dracula Returns will be showing at the Odeon until further notice. Probably for ever.

The Count gives an interview to a local hack

Hate crime, whistleblowers and jargon

Talking recently to a local man with a daughter who is also severely autistic, it was shocking to hear how his family had been treated by the neighbourhood bullies. Nasty whispers at school gates and name calling at work. One of the women involved had made allegations of serious abuse against another family with a disabled child, and that had sparked a protracted investigation by police and social services before she eventually admitted that her allegations were lies.


We all know it goes on, just as we know that the old and frail, the weak and the vulnerable are sometimes abused or neglected in hospitals, homes and day centres. We've all heard about Winterbourne View and Mid Staffs NHS Trust, and there are others. That's the real world, sadly.

In the parallel universe occupied by Carmarthenshire County Council, things are very different. Recently councillors were presented with the annual report of the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales. The report begins by praising the council for "its strong corporate vision and innovation", "good engagement with partners and users" and several more lorryloads of overarching commissioning frameworks, fully integrated services, partnerships, embedding, integration and positive outcomes.

The CSSIW report eventually gets round to admitting that it came to all these conclusions without carrying out a single service inspection during the year. But everything must be fine because that's what the Inspectorate was told by the people running the show.

Of course, there is no doubt much that is good in the county's services for the elderly and vulnerable, but buried away deep in the social services management jargon are a few less positive findings. The list below is by no means exhaustive:

• In plain language, there is little support available for people caring for relatives at home. This increases the risk that carers will find themselves unable to cope, and the council will have to take find room for more people in its homes.
• The rate of annual care reviews for older people "remains lower than most other councils".
• In the case of children, the CSSIW notes that a high number of referrals (to social services) do not even receive an initial assessment.
• There is also a hint of criticism that members of the public reporting suspected abuse of vulnerable adults have to contend with a confused and complex referral process.
• More timely annual reviews of foster carers
• Improvement is needed in producing education plans for children in care.

The CSSIW's excuse for the blizzard of jargon and sometimes extremely opaque language in the report (it is not at all clear, for example, what the evidence was for the report's conclusions) is probably that it was written for professionals rather than the public, but of course it need not be like that.

Ideally Carmarthenshire would follow the example set by some other councils and present reports such as this in a public forum where relatives and other interested parties are allowed to ask questions. It would be no bad thing to see agencies such as the CSSIW and Estyn put under real pressure to justify themselves, but then a short and carefully managed presentation makes life a lot easier for the inspectors and those being inspected.

But back to the real world.

This blog has been following the Delyth Jenkins story for some time, and the whole subject of whistleblowers and the lack of protection afforded to them is becoming an increasingly hot topic.

To anyone reading up on Delyth's case, it is very hard not to conclude that the bulk of the council's efforts went into trying to ensure that the whole affair was swept under the carpet as quickly as possible in order to limit negative publicity. As is so often the case with public bodies, Delyth's claims were settled out of court not to save money, but to put a lid on the tawdry facts.

The upshot of that is that the full facts have never been made public, and bearing in mind that there were no prosecutions, although abuse definitely took place, and that just about all of those involved are still working for the council, the cover-up is something which should be a cause for serious concern.

One of the things to emerge from the ombudsman's report on the Delyth case is that managers in the council's social services department, including senior managers, were aware of allegations of bullying and abuse before Delyth blew the whistle. They knew, for example, that the individual named in the report as Officer G had been using others to bully for him, while offering them protection.

The response when Delyth went to see the senior managers was that her complaint was "very untimely".

Officer G still works for the council, although it is understood that he has been on sick leave for some time now.

In the case of Officer B, who was directly involved in the physical abuse, Delyth asked at a meeting with the council's chief executive why the senior investigating manager (Officer M in the report) had not included all of the allegations against Officer B when he presided over her disciplinary. Delyth went on to ask whether the chief executive thought that Officer M's appointment to this senior role had been appropriate, especially since he had been strongly criticised by the Ombudsman in two previous draft reports produced before his promotion.

The chief executive replied that he had not appointed Officer M, the councillors had. What is true is that the councillors rubber-stamped a recommendation to appoint Officer M presented by, err, the chief executive, who for good measure had also been involved in the interview process.

Somehow it seems unlikely that councillors would have been made aware of the two draft reports criticising M when they were asked to approve his appointment. They were only draft reports, after all.

In the process of trying to make the council's leaders aware of what had been going on in the day centre for which they were responsible, Delyth wrote to the then leader of the council, Meryl Gravell. Mrs Gravell declined to meet her.

As far as the council was concerned, the whole sordid story came to an end when Cllr Meryl Gravell was reported as saying the following at a meeting of the council's Executive Board in November 2009:

 This particular lady [Sally, the young woman at the centre of the case] still enjoys herself at the centre, and I hope that this is the end of the matter. It is sad it happened, but we can now move on.

Just over three years on, and those words still sound hollow and shocking.

What really is sad is that by treating the whole thing as an exercise in PR management, the council failed to bring about lasting changes in the culture of parts of its social care services, and that new reports are  circulating of abuse and punishment of whistleblowers.

One such involves Mr John Davies, who tells his story here. Mr Davies took his concerns about abuse of vulnerable adults in the council's care to management in 2010. The investigation, which was carried out behind closed doors, took a year, and concluded that no action was to be taken. A couple of months later, Mr Davies found himself being called in at no notice to be told that complaints had been made against him, and he was suspended pending an investigation.

It turned out that the complaint was that Mr Davies had allegedly sworn. The investigation went on for almost another year, with Mr Davies left unaware of the substance of the allegations and who had made them until four days before his hearing. He was dismissed.

He lodged an internal appeal, but two appeals were cancelled, a third was aborted having only just got underway, and the fourth, which took place 18 months after the suspension, upheld his dismissal. Mr Davies noted to his dismay that the chair of the appeal panel yawned throughout the proceedings.

Mr Davies then found that he was out of time to take his case to an Employment Tribunal.

That is a summary of Mr Davies's account of events, and there are doubtless different versions.

What remains shocking is the extreme delays in resolving these cases, and the fact that whistleblowing, whether by Delyth Jenkins, John Davies or others (and there are other cases), seems inevitably to be followed by accusations made against the whistleblower. Delyth was accused of breach of confidentiality and "conspiracy", while John Davies was accused of swearing.

For some reason the persistent rumblings of abuse and victimisation of whistleblowers never seem to find their way on to the CSSIW's radar.

Some reflections on the James v Thompson libel trial

We've now had a couple of days to reflect on the judgement handed down in the case involving blogger Jacqui Thompson and the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council, Mark James.

Cneifiwr is not a lawyer and does not propose dissecting the findings of Mr Justice Tugendhat, but one thing that emerges from the judgement is how much emphasis was placed on the history of the planning dispute which pre-dated Jacqui's blog.

The narrative presented by Mr James's team was that this led to a campaign of personal revenge against the council and some of its senior officers, and the judge accepted this interpretation of Jacqui's motives. The rest of the case and the judge's findings then inevitably flowed from that interpretation.

A number of witnesses made themselves available to give testimony on Jacqui's behalf, but the judge ruled that most of their written evidence was inadmissible because it constituted opinion, and he said, he was not prepared to conduct an opinion poll. In the event only one witness for Jacqui gave vidence, and that revolved around the events which led to the publication of Mr James's letter to the madaxeman blog.

The problem with that was that the whole question of Jacqui's motives was a question of opinion and interpretation, and in the end only Mr James's opinion counted.

For all those of us who have had the pleasure of meeting Jacqui and  getting to know her, the idea that Jacqui's blog was one prolonged exercise of revenge is false.

The judge noted in his verdict that Jacqui and her husband have only a very modest income, so his decision to award damages of £25,000 against her has to be seen as punitive. How justice or the public interest are served by ruining a hard working family and rewarding a senior local government official backed by public funds (in a way which remains legally highly questionable) is not clear.

For the press and the rest of us, the judgement is fraught with dangers. A key part of the judgement found that Jacqui Thompson was guilty of harassment through her blog. Where is the line to be drawn between harassment and legitimate comment and criticism of an arm of government?

The local press in Carmarthenshire knows from bitter experience that the council is extremely intolerant of criticism, and there was a timely wake-up call this week to the Llanelli Star and its sister papers:

Llanelli Star ‏@LlanelliStar

Llanelli Star trainee reporter @Chad_Welch ejected from council meeting and has notes seized. Full story here

The effect of the judgement will be to strengthen the chief executive's conviction that he is beyond reproach and beyond criticism. The rest of us had better watch out.

The last word goes to Lord Justice Cocklecarrot and his famous summing up of the Jeremy Thorpe case.

Dw i eisiau byw yn Gymraeg - Safiad Sir Gaerfyrddin

Cyflwynodd Cymdeithas yr Iaith restr o 1,500 o enwau pobl leol sy eisiau byw yn Gymraeg i gynrychiolwyr y Cyngor Sir yng Nghaerfyrddin y bore yma. Daeth rhyw 50 o bobl i weld y seremoni fer, gan gynnwys Heledd Cynwal, yr actor Andrew Teilo a nifer o gynghorwyr.

Ar ôl ei hannerch swyddogol tynnodd Cadeirydd y Cyngor, Siân Thomas, ei bling a rhoi araith angerddol. Roedd rhaid gweithredu mewn argyfwng yn hytrach na sefydlu pwyllgorau newydd, meddai, gan ychwanegu ei bod hi'n bwrw ei phen yn erbyn "difaterwch ac hyd yn oed atgasedd" tuag at yr iaith yn Neuadd y Sir ers blynyddoedd mawr.

Fel arall, roedd ymateb y Cyngor Sir i'r digwyddiad yn hynod o siomedig. Roedd Arweinydd y Cyngor, Kevin Madge, i fod i siarad ond newidiodd ei feddwl. Fe ddaeth y Cynghorydd Keith Davies, aelod o'r Bwrdd Gweithredol â chyfrifoldeb dros yr iaith, yn ei le. Ddywedodd Mr Davies yr un gair.

Y peth pwysicaf i'r Cyngor Sir, mae'n ymddangos, oedd cuddio'r Mercs swyddogol rhag aelodau o'r Gymdeithas ar ôl i limo Leighton Andrews gael ei feddiannu gan brotestwyr yn Nhŷ Croes.

James v Thompson Libel Trial - updated

Update 16 March

Discussions are underway to set up an appeal fund, the aim being that any money raised should be ring-fenced by the council for a good cause, such as respite care. If anyone has any experience of running a public appeal, please could they get in touch via the e-mail address on the blog. The hope is that we can  make something good come out of this.

Thanks also to all of those who have sent messages. Normally this blog tries to publish all comments, even those which may be considered offensive. Of the messages so far received, only two have been hostile, and the people concerned are welcome to write to the Carmarthen Journal which will no doubt be happy to publish such things. Cneifiwr's normal open door policy will be resumed when we move on to other subjects.

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As everyone will have heard by now, the judgment went against Jacqui Thompson, and the chief executive was awarded £25,000 in damages.

The text of the judgement can be found here and here, and a BBC report on the outcome can be found here.

David Allen Greene, who writes for the New Statesman on legal matters tweeted his first reaction thus:

"shockingly illiberal and a genuine deterrent to public participation in local government."

And that sums it up.

Jacqui and her legal team are considering whether to appeal a judgement which will have devastating financial consequences for her and her family. For the rest of us, this is a very black day for accountable, open and transparent local government in Carmarthenshire, and it poses a serious threat to free speech.

There is talk of an appeal to raise funds to help her, and I hope to be able to report more on that in the coming days.

Week In Week Out - Fat Cats and the WAO

The latest edition of Week In Week Out (available on iPlayer for another week here) took a fairly jaunty look at the pay of public sector bosses in Wales, and it will have had a lot of people gnashing their teeth in fury. Not one of the people featured was prepared to go in front of the camera to justify their exorbitant salaries and pay packages, although a Cardiff City councillor took the Meryl Gravell slot to argue that council chief executives and others are such a rare and precious resource that competition for them is forcing salaries up. If we want the best, we have to pay top dollar.

Somehow, that argument doesn't ring true when you remember that a good many of our top council officers have been in post for years and are cruising towards a gold-plated retirement, while swathes of the pond life in their charge are made redundant or have to claim benefits to try to make ends meet.

The way the programme was structured, picking out one name from each of the 10 sectors under review (NHS trust bosses, Quango bosses, council bosses, etc.) meant that viewers in Carmarthenshire were spared from hearing that our own chief executive easily makes it into the top 10 earners because his salary and benefits package is slightly less than that of the boss of Cardiff.

The programme came about because of the scandal at Caerphilly, where the council chief executive effectively awarded himself a massive pay rise. Had it not been for complaints from opposition councillors in the Labour-run authority and members of staff, it is unlikely that the Wales Audit Office would have had its slumbers disturbed.

The fact that the WAO did intervene probably owed as much to nervousness in the executive suites of our Welsh Winter Palaces at the sight of a spontaneous walk-out by Caerphilly council staff. With the peasants in revolt, the chief executive, Anthony Sullivan become suddenly expendable, and the WAO was dispatched with a blue flashing light.

The WAO's report found that

• The meeting at which the salary rise was approved had not been publicised, and so members of the public did not have an opportunity to go along. In reality, of course, the council would have slapped a public interest exemption on the report and excluded the press and public from the meeting, but the WAO appeared to feel very cross that the matter had not appeared on a published agenda.
• Equally shocking, the WAO found, was that Mr Sullivan failed to declare an interest and participated in the meeting.

Of course, this sort of thing could never happen in Carmarthenshire, although a spookily similar meeting of the council's Executive Board took place on 23 January 2012. The were various items on the published agenda, but they did not include a report and recommendation that the chief executive should be given public money to fight his libel action against Jacqui Thompson.

Nevertheless, the meeting approved the report and recommendation, and Mr James was handed a blank cheque.

It emerged in court recently that Mr James did not declare an interest, and that he participated in the meeting.

It remains to be seen what that indemnity was worth, but we can be sure that it will make Anthony Sullivan's pay rise look like loose change from the back of the sofa..

The indemnity was introduced as an "emergency item" according to the minutes of the meeting, something which will probably induce hollow laughter from various councillors who have tried to introduce emergency items in meetings of the full council during the last year, only to be blocked by the chief executive. Indeed, recently the chief executive took the precaution of removing "Any Other Business" from meeting agendas to prevent this from happening.

Bearing in mind that Mrs Thompson's writ was served to Mr James on 14 November 2011 and that three meetings of the Executive Board were held before the "emergency" on 23 January, you have to wonder why the indemnity proposal could not have been placed on an agenda in the usual way. But then, guess who is responsible for drawing up meeting agendas.

Mr Sullivan may well feel that he has been the victim of rough justice if the WAO does not now head west to Carmarthen.

Unison writes open letter to Kevin Madge

When he's not zooming around Carmarthenshire in the new Mercedes, chauffeur-driven or otherwise, provided courtesy of the county's tax payers last year, Kevin Madge likes to pose as a man of the people. Sometimes he comes over all misty eyed when Cardiff Bay awards a slice of funding to Carmarthenshire and says things like, "Carwyn has not forgotten his roots", implying that the county is being singled out for special favours, when of course it isn't.

For years now he has sat at the top table of an administration which has lavished money on pet prestige projects and sacred cows, such as the council's bloated PR machine, while pushing through cuts to bread and butter public services.

He fought the last council elections in 2012 not on a platform about what he would do for Carmarthenshire, but on the basis that a vote for Labour would send a message to Cameron and Clegg, although it is unlikely that either of them could identify Carmarthenshire on a map.

Unison has now had enough, and has written an open letter to Cllr Madge pointing out that this particular Labour leader doesn't appear to have any time to talk to the unions on which the Labour Party is so reliant for funding, and querying the council's spending priorities.

With more than four years to go before the next council elections, Kev's circle of friends now seems to be confined to the likes of Meryl and Pam Palmer. And with friends like those, he can scarcely afford to alienate Unison.

Council boss: Tony Blair to the rescue

It's hard to think of many people these days who would quote Tony Blair approvingly on any topic, and even harder to think of anyone who would quote the globe trotting, born again multi-millionaire former Labour leader approvingly on the subject of money, but that is precisely what the Chief Executive of Carmarthenshire County Council, Mark James, did at yesterday's meeting of the full council (see Caebrwyn's excellent report here).

Blair's point was about senior public figures being paid 20 times the earnings of the lowest paid people in the organisations they run, and Mr James would have councillors and the public believe that his salary, at 13 times the pay of the lowest paid council worker, was a modest affair.

That would be bad enough, but Mr James was once again being rather economical with his version of how things are. As we know, council chief executives enjoy a very lucrative sideline as returning officers in elections, a perk which goes with the job. We recently learned how Mr James paid himself £20,000 as an advance on his fees as returning officer in the 2012 council elections before anyone knew how many wards were going to be contested.

Returning officer fees for council elections are paid by the council itself, but fees for other elections including the Welsh Assembly, Westminster, the European Parliament and referenda come out of different pots, and are not disclosed by the council as part of his earnings. Whatever the ratio is, it isn't 13:1.

If it was bizarrely fitting that Mr James should quote Blair in his own defence, it came as no surprise at all to see that Meryl Gravell dusted off her old quote about monkeys and peanuts to justify the unjustifiable.

In a nice touch, all this came on the day when it was announced that the police were being called in to investigate the circumstances surrounding a pay deal for the chief executive of Labour-run Caerphilly Council, Anthony Sullivan (who is still waiting for his CBE). This followed a damning report from the Wales Audit Office.

Jonathan Edwards MP and Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM have called for a WAO investigation of how Mr James paid himself £20,000 out of council funds without apparently needing any approval from elected councillors, and why the council said it had no record of when the money was paid.

There have been many calls in the past for the WAO to investigate goings-on in Carmarthenshire, and all have been dismissed. If the auditor does pull his finger out this time, he may also like to investigate the circumstances surrounding the chief executive's libel indemnity.

One of the things the WAO didn't like about Caerphilly was that the chief executive of the council not only produced a report recommending himself for a big pay rise, but also participated in the meeting which approved it, even though he had a direct financial interest in the outcome.

The WAO might like to ask what part Mr James played in the drawing up of a recommendation that he should be given an indemnity to defend and counter-sue in a libel action, and why he participated in the meeting which signed it off.

And not a declaration of interest in sight.

Shops 'queuing up' to open or close says paper

Readers of the Carmarthen Journal may be feeling a little confused this week after reading a report on the closure of yet more shops in the town centre, as well as digesting the news that the town's main post office is set to close. On top of that comes an announcement that Dreams, the bed store, has gone into administration.

Only two weeks ago the paper ran a piece which almost certainly originated from the county council's press office claiming that stores were queuing up to get into the retail heaven of Carmarthen.

The paper also carries a vox pop this week in which almost all of those interviewed lament the loss of so many independent shops.

It is not clear whether the paper has the memory span of a goldfish or whether it thinks its readers do, but County Hall is unlikely to forget this in a hurry.

Operatives in the Ministry of Truth will also have choked on their hobnobs this morning as they read a piece buried deep in the bowels of the paper quoting blogger Jacqui Thompson on the council's decision to begin filming council meetings as a one year pilot.

To cap it all, the newspaper carries a subversive reference to Delyth Jenkins, although she is not named, in a very short piece reporting calls by Angela Burns AM for whistleblowers to be given proper protection.

Cneifiwr has decided to set aside £1.30 to see whether this was the first stirrings of a Carmarthen spring, or if it was just a case of the cat taking a winter break.

Llu o bobl am ffoi rhag y Gymraeg

Diweddariad 4 Mawrth

Yn ôl y sôn cawn ni erthygl arall eto yn y Journal yr wythnos hon. Mae grŵp o wrthwynebwyr yn honni nad yw Cwmni Sbectrwm sy'n arwain y cyfarfod ar 7 Mawrth yn annibynnol, ac maent wedi datgladdu astudiaeth o Ganada sy'n dod i'r casgliad bod dwyieithrwydd yn niweidiol.

Mae yna astudiaethau ar gael hefyd sy'n dweud bod yfed potelaid o wisgi a smoco pecyn o ffags bob dydd yn llesol, hyd y gwn i.

__________________________________________________________

Er na fu'r un gair am sgandal treuliau Prif Weithredwr Cyngor Sir Caerfyrddin i'w weld yn nhudalennau'r Carmarthen Journal yn ddiweddar, cafodd darllenwyr y papur ffrwd o erthyglau am benderfyniad llywodraethwyr Ysgol y Ddwylan yng Nghastell Newydd Emlyn i droi'r ysgol yn un Gymraeg.

Y gwir amdani yw nad oes fawr o ddim wedi digwydd ers i'r llywodraethwyr gyhoeddi eu penderfyniad ym mis Ionawr. Y ffeithiau yw bod yr ysgol am gael gwared ar y ffrwd Saesneg dros gyfnod o bum mlynedd ar ôl ymgynghoriad eleni. Dyna i gyd.

Er gwaethaf diffyg llwyr o newyddion am y peth, mae'r papur yn gwneud ei orau glas i godi twrw ac arllwys petrol ar y tân. Yn y rhifyn diwethaf dyfynnir rhywun di-enw yn rhagweld y bydd llu o bobl yn symud o'r ardal os na fydd ffrwd Saesneg ar gael mwyach. Gallai hyn fod â goblygiadau dirfawr, meddai Mr neu Mrs Anhysbys.

A fydd rhaid i'r ymsefydlwyr gwynion harneisio eu ceirt a ffoi'n ôl i Fognor, Bolton a Birmingham rhag y brodorion cyntefig a'u hiaith chwerthinllyd? Wir?

Am ryw reswm neu'i gilydd, doedd dim lle yn y papur hyd yn hyn i rieni sy'n cefnogi'r cynllun.

Mae'r ysgol ei hun wedi trefnu cyfarfod agored gydag arbenigwyr mewn addysg ddwyieithog yr wythnos hon. Doedd dim sôn am hynny yn y Journal, wrth gwrs. Tybed a fydd Mr a Mrs Anhysbys yno?

@carmsccpress with love

The Electoral Reform Society recently carried out a survey of Welsh councils to establish how many of them allowed the use of Twitter during public meetings. Some have a blanket ban on tweeting, such as Wrexham, while others such as Carmarthenshire prohibit councillors from using Twitter during meetings. As usual in Carmarthenshire, the ban does not appear to be supported by any written rules.

The Society also looked at how Welsh councils use Twitter to communicate with the public. Of the 21 authorities that responded (including the three national parks) Carmarthenshire came in at 19, just ahead of Angelsey and Rhondda Cynon Taff in terms of the number of followers. Rhondda Cynon Taff had a reasonable excuse as it had not actually launched a Twitter service at the time.

For a council which says that it employs 20 staff in public relations (one of the largest in Wales) and which last year won an award from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations for "outstanding in-house public relations", this was, to put it mildly, something of an embarrassing failure.

Strangely the number of followers has soared in the short time since the survey was published, which suggests either that friends and family have been pressed into service to bolster the numbers, or that the publicity generated by the recent libel trial has paid dividends. Sometimes, of course, people actually buy followers to make themselves seem more popular, but perish the thought.

A rummage through the council's Twitter archive offers some clues as to why the service is so unpopular.

The number of tweets varies from day to day, reasonably enough, and a typical day yields around 15-20 messages. There are lots of routine announcements such as "Licensing committee meeting today 10 am. County Hall", and sometimes there are what appear to be campaigns, including a recent effort to publicise the council's Care and Repair service for older people. And they are now nearly all bilingual. Great stuff.

Another campaign took place earlier this year to encourage people to go along to sign the Armed Forces Covenant, and according to the press office, children from two Llanelli schools were dragooned into going along to witness the ceremony.Not so great.

The armed forces also made a surprising appearance at that shoppertainment complex - the one which local people voted overwhelmingly to be called the Stepney Centre but which the council insists on calling Ffwrnes. Not long after the new theatre had opened it played host to army officers, drummers and tanks (yes, really), and the people of Llanelli were encouraged to go along and look.

But since the council considers that Jim Davidson and Live Superstars of Wrestling will make the new centre the cultural hub of South West Wales, perhaps the tanks, drummers and army types were not out of place.

Perhaps Cneifiwr should point out to any non-Welsh readers that we're really not like this at all. The true cultural capital of South West Wales is of course the Mwldan Theatre in Cardigan, a venue which is mercifully safe from the clutches of the philistines in County Hall, Carmarthen.

Then there are more questionable advertising campaigns promoting commercial ventures such as Nandos and the Hungry Horse. Nandos, we learn, is trading well above expectations at its new branch in the council's shoppertainment complex in Llanelli.

Occasionally we are told that there will be a surgery for constituents. Apparently Kevin Madge and Colin Evans (both Labour) are the only councillors to hold surgeries. Certainly none of the opposition councillors appears to. The irony here is that Kevin Madge went on record last year describing Twitter as dangerous.

Once a day the press office puts out a standard message saying, "Catch up on today's news and press" with a link to the council's output of stories about dog muck, litterbugs, political propaganda and occasionally hilarious press releases written in bizarre and demented English. That's not really the press, is it? Except that reading this stuff will give you a sneak preview of what will be in the following week's Carmarthen Journal.


If all this is starting to make the council's Twitter feed sound mildly interesting, be assured that it isn't. Having ploughed through hundreds of tweets, Cneifiwr should know.

Back in 2011 the council launched a bizarre Twitter offensive in the name of deputy leader Pam Palmer. For a whole week she (or rather the press office) produced a stream of tweets in English and Welsh which made her sound like Abergwili's low-budget answer to the late Queen Mother, as she was ferried around the county visiting schools and hospitals.

The press office showed back then that it had not really understood Twitter or social media, because automated, virtual Pam was available in broadcast mode only. She did not take questions or interact with the peasantry of Carmarthenshire.

And that's still how it is today. In the hundreds of council tweets since January 1 this year, only 10 are actual interactions with the public, and 8 of those are thanking people for saying how wonderful Ffwrnes or some other council  service is. Of the remaining two, a woman tweeted to complain about the lack of parent and child parking spaces in council car parks. The press office batted that one away by replying that parent and child parking spaces were a feature of public car parks, followed by a snarled "Thank you".

Another unsatisfied customer who must have felt short changed.

The other query came from Dyfrig Thomas, aka Dyfrig Llanelli, a former county councillor, who wondered why Carmarthenshire could not produce anything like the excellent Twitter bad weather services put out by Ceredigion and Swansea. It's all on the website, came back the rather brusque reply.

Of course the 10 people who feature in the council's Twitter feed are only the tip of the iceberg. A search on all those contacting the council's press office with questions or complaints shows that there were many more who did not receive a reply. What they all had in common was that they asked awkward questions or said things which the council does not like.

And that brings us to the second major reason why the council's Twitter feed is not a success. Whether you like them or not, Twitter and the other social media are democratic. They don't like crude propaganda, and they don't like one-way megaphone contributors.

Cneifiwr's advice for anyone who who does not receive a reply is to follow your question up with a tweet making a formal complaint. Not because this will make the council take your question or comment seriously, and you should certainly not expect an apology.What it will do in the short term is push up the number of complaints the council has to register and report (they will love you for doing that), and in the longer term it just may force the council to interact with the people it serves and finally understand that communication is a two-way process.

Well, you never know.

Whether the press office in its current form will see the light and realise that propaganda is a waste of time and money is quite another matter, because the press office clearly has ambitions to turn itself into a news agency.

It recently announced that anyone interested could sign up to have a feed of stories about dog poo, litter, black propaganda and demented hype delivered to to their computer screens.

Somehow, I can't imagine there will be many takers.

Loaded dice - planning tales from Carmarthenshire

Back in December (previous post here) the people of Penybanc near Ammanford breathed a sigh of relief when the county council's planning committee went against officers' recommendations and rejected plans to increase the number of houses to be built on the Tirychen Farm site from 141 to 336.

The decision attracted an unusual degree of media attention, and there was near universal opposition to the proposal from Swallow Property Developments Ltd, a company domiciled in the tax haven of Guernsey.

As so often with Carmarthenshire County Council, the celebrations were short-lived. Cneifiwr noted at the time that one of the only other comparable examples of a revolt by planning committee members had occurred over a plan to build executive-style houses in Waungilwen near Drefach Felindre. The Waungilwen refusal was subsequently overturned in very peculiar circumstances, and history is now being repeated at Penybanc.

There were a number of material reasons for rejecting the Penybanc expansion, including the developer's intention to build on land which falls outside the boundaries of the council's new Local Development Plan, but one of the primary objections was the impact the huge development would have on the linguistic make-up of the area.

The relevant planning guidance is contained in Technical Advice Note 20, or TAN20 for short. TAN20 is one of those impressive sounding government policy documents which turns out to be about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

The policy defines a linguistically sensitive area as one in which more than 25% of the population speaks Welsh, and developments are supposed to be accompanied by language impact assessments. In theory TAN20 would cover pretty much the whole of Carmarthenshire, but in practice TAN20 is rarely brought into play, and when it is developers and planning officers often manage to turn reason on its head.

In the case of a 400-home development at Ffos-Las and a 300-home development at Saron, assessments were produced which concluded that the new housing estates would have a positive impact on the language.

The methodology used to draw up assessments was developed for Wales as a whole and is deeply flawed. Assessments are based on a list of 18 questions, with simple one-word answers (positive, neutral, negative).  Quite a few of the questions are vague or ambiguous, and others are simply irrelevant to the planning process.

Where assessments have been produced which conclude that a development would have a negative impact on the surrounding area, the council's planning officers often rubbish them (as was the case in Penybanc) before proposing "mitigation" measures.

The usual mitigation measures are phasing, which involves building a development over a period of years in the mistaken belief that, say, 400 houses built over a period of 5 years will have less of an impact than 400 houses built in one go. In reality, of course, this is what developers would do of their own accord anyway, as they have no desire to flood the local market.

The other standard mitigation measure is to put up bilingual signage in a new development, something which will have next to effect at all.

In its Local Development Plan, Carmarthenshire goes on to say that it will undertake other unspecified measures to safeguard the language in such situations. Bearing in mind that the council has been making deep cuts to its meagre financial support to organisations such as the Mentrau Iaith, that commitment is not worth the paper it is written on.

But back to Penybanc and Waungilwen.

When the Penybanc application was refused, the officers were instructed to present the reasons for refusal for endorsement at the next planning committee meeting a month later. However, two meetings went by before the officers came back bearing "new information" from the developer. The head of planning told the committee members that they could no longer endorse the refusal, but would instead have to consider the new information.

The new information in this case was that the developer had decided to withdraw plans to build on land outside the LDP boundary, and as a result  development would be scaled back from 339 houses to 289.

Because the refusal had not been endorsed, the developer was able to change the application and keep it live rather than begin again from scratch. The committee therefore decided that it would reconsider the application at a later date.

As is invariably the case with decisions that go against officers' recommendations, councillors were told that there could be dire consequences in the form of a planning appeal, with the potential for costs to be awarded against the council.

To reduce the likelihood of a planning appeal which could go against the council, planning officers invite developers for discussions after a rejection, and that appears to have happened in the case of Penybanc. The head of planning told councillors that the developer had taken legal advice (well, they would, wouldn't they) before coming up with an amended plan.

The head of planning added the following for good measure:

There are grounds for the application of costs in considering whether it was reasonable, in the light of available evidence, for the Council to maintain its objection to the grant of the application thereby causing an appeal to be pursued.

In plain language what that means is, "don't even think about rejecting the application for a second time, because the developer could go to appeal". Whatever grounds the developer might have for seeking an appeal will have been boosted by the arguments the planning officers' used when they recommended the application in the first place, despite the fact that the development is out of scale, involved building on land outside the LDP and went against the strong advice of the former Welsh Language Board and other agencies.

So far, the Penybanc story has been a carbon copy of what happened at Waungilwen

In Waungilwen, the planners were faced not by a Guernsey domiciled developer but a couple of sisters who had inherited the land. Their intention was understood to be to obtain planning permission and then sell the land off to a developer.

Despite that, the planning officers played the threat of a legal wrangle. 

The Waungilwen story is complex, but can be summarised as follows:

19 August 2010 - the planning officers present a report to the planning committee recommending acceptance of the two linked applications, despite massive local opposition. The committee decided to defer a decision and visit the site.

23 November 2010 - the site visit takes place, and councillors return to County Hall where they reject the applications. The committee instructs officers to present the reasons for refusal at the next meeting.

12 January 2011 - Two committee meetings later the officers tell councillors that "new information has been received", and that the refusal cannot therefore be endorsed. They will have to reconsider the applications at a later date.

The two reasons for refusal were the language impact assessment and an issue relating to surface water disposal.

The minutes of the meeting are worth quoting directly at this point: 

The two reasons went before Planning Committee on the 12^th January; as further information had been received from the applicant just prior to this meeting the matter was deferred, it was considered prudent to examine these details prior to any decision being issued. As the decision notice had not been issued and only a resolution to refuse in principle was taken by the Planning Committee, the application has not been determined. Members agreed to defer the issuing of a decision until the additional information had been examined.

The words in bold type are significant here, as we shall see.

5 July 2011 - Almost six months go by, and the Waungilwen applications re-appear on the agenda. Surface water disposal is no longer an issue, and the officers have tied the Welsh Language Board in knots. The planning officers went back to the Welsh Language Board and asked it for its opinion again. The Board was clear that the development would have a detrimental effect on the Welsh language. That was obviously the wrong answer, so the planning officers went back yet again and told the Board that the proposed development was within the UDP. The Board said that without further details of the concerns opposing the development and assessment of the Welsh language impact during the UDP process, it was regrettably "not in a position to form an opinion at this time".

Hardly a resounding endorsement, but the planning officers used that to dismiss the language as a reason for rejecting the applications.

The applications were approved by Labour and Independent councillors. The battle was over, and thanks to the planning officers, the developers had once again carried the day against the wishes of the local community.

There is an intriguing postscript to this story which campaigners in Penybanc may want to note.

The planning meeting on 12 January 2011 began at 10 a.m. and ended at 12.p.m., and as we have seen the head of planning told the committee that information had been received from the applicant just prior to the meeting.

It now seems that the sequence of events was not quite like that.

An e-mail from the applicants' agents arrived in the Planning Office at 11.49 on the morning of 12 January, 11 minutes before the committee concluded business for the day. The author, who seems to have had a very powerful crystal ball, wrote "Further to your Planning Committee granting a deferment on the two Planning Applications in Waungilwen, four copies of the Hydrological Report...will be deposited for you at the Planning Office".

In other words, the "new information" which triggered the deferment appears not to have arrived with the planning officers until after the planning meeting.

Carmarthenshire has given the term "retrospective planning" a whole new meaning, and examples such as this will further undermine public confidence in the planning system, where so many people believe that decisions are rigged and that there is no point in exercising their legal right to object.

Update

Mrs Trisha Breckman has been in touch to make the following observation:

"In the case of yet another so-called agricultural shed application for my neighbour, the planning officer recommended refusal on grounds there was little genuine agriculture, and there was already a shed for storage. It was rightly refused by the planning committee. A couple of months later, Head of Planning E. Bowen, did away with the planning committee's decision and approved the same application under G.P.D.O."

Election expenses - help yourself!

Thanks to Freedom of Information requests submitted by Plaid Cymru (press release here) we now know that Carmarthenshire County Council is not sure how much it paid its chief executive in expenses in his capacity as returning officer or when exactly the money was paid, although it is clear that substantial amounts of money were paid well before the elections actually took place.

Unlike the other 21 Welsh councils contacted by Plaid, Carmarthenshire said that it did not hold information on when the expenses were paid, and it provided information on the amounts paid which conflicted with answers previously given.

Readers may recall that the council was not able to provide answers on how much it really spends on its propaganda sheet, the Carmarthenshire News, and was unable to say how much it spent on advertising in its own rag.

In the case of the returning officer's expenses, Carmarthenshire would also seem to be unique in giving its chief executive discretion to pay himself expenses when and as he sees fit.

More confirmation that the council works like a private fiefdom, with no proper accounting in place for how and when it spends money, and the sort of corporate governance controls which are reminiscent of the financial arrangements enjoyed by the late Robert Maxwell.

As with so much else in Carmarthenshire County Council, there is a complete lack of transparency when it comes to returning officer expenses. These are substantial amounts of money paid out of different pots, and it seems that nobody, apart from the chief executive himself is entirely sure how much he gets or when it is paid. Indeed, in the case of council funded elections, the council has confirmed that he can pay himself whenever he likes.

Earlier this week the council announced that finally it will be going ahead with a pilot to broadcast meetings of the full council, although not it seems any of the other committee meetings or meetings of the governing Executive Board.

At least that is a very belated step in the right direction, but before we get too excited, it is worth remembering that the council makes very extensive use of powers under the Local Government Act 1972 to exclude press and public from meetings.

Recently there have been more secret meetings about the council's public toilets which the authority is trying to palm off onto community councils. No private sector interests are involved.

At a meeting of the Planning Committee on 31 January, press and public were excluded from a discussion of the ombudsman's report on the Breckman case (or rather a watered down version of the ombudsman's report). The council justified this by saying that it wanted to protect the identity of those involved, even though everybody knows who was involved, and Mrs Breckman wrote to the council asking for the meeting to be held in public.

On Monday, 4 March,  the Executive Board will be considering a further two "exempted" items in secret. Those relate to the Elli Theatre in Llanelli, which the council would very much like to get rid of, and a mysterious entry relating to "land to the rear of the former St Ivel building" in Johnstown.

The St Ivel building is the property which the council bought and then agreed to gift to Towy Community Church for 99 years for its bowling alley, "therapy" rooms and new church/auditorium. Effectively, the entire project is being financed by the tax payer, and yet tax payers are not allowed to know what is happening to their assets and money.

So much for Kevin Madge's commitment to transparency.