Something nasty in the bogs

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago (well, just over three weeks ago to be precise), the leader of Carmarthenshire County Council, Kevin Madge, wrote to the Western Mail to assure readers that,

It is a personal commitment of mine that the council should be as open and as transparent as we can possibly make it.

A week later on 5 November Cllr Madge presided over a meeting of the council's Executive Board which featured an agenda item that was deemed to be too sensitive for open discussion in front of the public and press, and a public interest exemption was slapped on it.

It is council officers who propose which items should be withheld from the public at such meetings, and in theory it is elected councillors who make the final decision after carefully weighing up the pros and cons of secrecy versus publication. Needless to say, that never happens in Carmarthenshire and the public interest exemption is unfailingly applied.

On 5 November the top secret agenda item was a proposal to transfer 33 public toilets from the county council to town and community councils. Local councils which take up the offer will receive a one-off payment of £1,000, and the county council will continue to pay the business rates.

 

This is the third time in recent years that these proposals have been discussed and agreed under a public exemption, and on the previous two occasions the county council's, ahem, generous offer was met with stony silence from the community councils. 

On this occasion the county council claims it has received "representations in relation to a number of facilities that could be regarded as being in tourist areas and has therefore decided to include all grade two facilities for transfer to town and community councils".

In plain English that probably means that County Hall has decided that it might as well get shot of the whole lot to try and save a bit more money, rather than a clamour from community councils wishing to commit financial suicide by taking on more commitments.

But why the secrecy? Is Kev just pee-shy, or is there something nasty lurking in the bogs that the council doesn't want to tell us about?

It is a personal commitment of mine that the council should be as open and transparent as we can possibly make it.

Read more: Wales Online http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/letters-to-the-editor/western-mail-letters/2012/10/29/western-mail-letters-monday-29-october-2012-91466-32119768/#ixzz2DGDkQpPd

Read more: Wales Online http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/letters-to-the-editor/western-mail-letters/2012/10/29/western-mail-letters-monday-29-october-2012-91466-32119768/#ixzz2DGDkQpPd

It is a personal commitment of mine that the council should be as open and transparent as we can possibly make it.

Read more: Wales Online http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/letters-to-the-editor/western-mail-letters/2012/10/29/western-mail-letters-monday-29-october-2012-91466-32119768/#ixzz2DGDkQpPd

Paranoia in County Hall

Update

It seems that the council has been ordered by the fire officer to re-open the fire exit. It has been locked  since July 2011, with the council claiming that it had made sure that it was not in breach of fire regulations. That was clearly not the case, and as a result the council has put the safety of the public at risk in order to defend what it calls an "operational decision" to clamp down on anyone who might record what is said in public meetings.

Meanwhile the council can expect to hear from Mrs Williams and Cllr Thomas who are understandably very upset and angry to be branded as liars live, on air by the council's press office.

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Today's edition of the Jason Mohammad programme on Radio Wales featured a short piece on the extraordinary measures taken by Carmarthenshire County Council to make things as unpleasant as possible for members of the public wishing to exercise their democratic rights to observe council meetings.

Two members of the public, Mrs Lesley Williams and Mr Wyn Thomas, took part in the programme, and they described the process which everyone has to go through to get through the doors and into the public gallery. Both had particular concerns about public safety, as visitors to the public gallery are locked in and have to phone for assistance to be let out again. Moreover, as another member of the public recently discovered, the fire exit at the bottom of the stairs leading to the gallery is locked and bolted.

The council, notorious for its love of PR, was "unable" to take part in the programme, but issued a bizarre statement, accusing Mrs Williams, a retired school teacher, and Mr Thomas, a town councillor in Carmarthen, of being part of a campaign which was spreading lies about the council.

The statement went on to claim, completely falsely, that there is no "lock down", although it rather gave the game away when it revealed that members of the public had to use a telephone to get out.

On previous occasions, the council has also claimed that in the event of a fire, the doors would open automatically. While that may or may not be true in the case of the doors operated by a swipe card, it is certainly not true of the old-fashioned doors at the fire exit, which are locked with old-fashioned keys and old-fashioned bolts.

The statement also used security as one of the justifications for its policy, although it did not bother to produce any evidence of a security risk.

The truth is that the policy was introduced in response to an attempt by Caebrwyn to film part of a council meeting nearly two years ago. Prior to that the gallery was accessible to anyone who wanted to climb the stairs, and the council clearly did not consider the public to be a security risk.

Neither Mrs Williams nor Mr Thomas are part of any campaign, as far as I am aware, and both almost certainly have a case in law for defamation in the light of the claim, broadcast live to a large audience, that they are spreading lies against the council.

Listeners to Jason Mohammad's programme were surely shocked to hear a local authority behaving in this way, and the court of public opinion will have decided who was really lying here.

The programme will be available online for a further 7 days, and can be found here. The interview begins after approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Carmarthenshire and school bus charges

Following on from our look at Leighton Andrews' plans for education in Wales, Carmarthenshire County Council is providing the minister with another compelling reason as to why this county council at least should not be left in charge of education.

Just as the Welsh Government is busy trying to persuade more pupils to stay in full-time education until the age of 18, Carmarthenshire is planning to introduce new charges which will make staying at school a very expensive proposition for many families in the county.

Buried away in Carmarthenshire County Council's budget package approved at the beginning of 2012 were several time bombs, including a provision to end free school transport for children aged 16+. The council  estimated that this would yield an annual saving of £477,000.

Almost no detail has so far been provided, but parents need to brace themselves for what will certainly be a massive additional burden on household budgets.

The first question is how the council arrives at a figure of £477,000.

Carmarthenshire is geographically a largely rural county, and many children face long journeys to school. Thanks to the Modernising Education Programme and the closure of schools, more and more children will need school transport over long distances.

School buses will need to run regardless of whether they carry pupils who have turned 16, and the cost of running a bus carrying 25 12-16 year-olds is pretty much the same as a bus which carries 35 12-18 year-olds.

Unless there are cases where the authority needs to run additional buses because of the number of 16-18 year-olds, the buses will have to run regardless.

So the next question is what agreements does the council have in place with bus companies? We can be sure that any FOI request would be refused on the basis that this is, conveniently, commercially sensitive information. But councillors may like to ask whether services are paid as a flat fee per route or per head. Since many school buses do not run at anything like full capacity, the likelihood is that a flat charge per route is an important component in the charging structure.

Will this measure actually save real money, or is it in reality an exercise in revenue raising?

Crucially for parents, how will charges be introduced? Will money be collected by the bus companies, or will it be collected by the council?

Will provision be made for children whose parents are on low or modest incomes (a very high proportion of children in many cases)?

Will children have to start paying once they have reached their 16th birthday, as seems to be the case? If so, quite a few children will have to start paying before they take their GCSEs.

And how will charges be calculated? Per mile? If charges are on a par with normal commercial bus routes, it will cost parents hundreds of pounds a year for one child, and very likely a figure equivalent to what the average family spends on energy bills if you are unfortunate enough to have more than one 16 year-old at school.

Of course, it may not come to this because we are now fortunate to have a Deputy Leader and Executive Board member (Cllr Pam Palmer no less) responsible for looking after the interests of rural communities in the county, although it is not at all clear what she has done in the seven months she has occupied that post.

According to the official decision record, she has so far clocked up a single meeting which ran for 20 minutes at the beginning of October to approve the council's use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Leighton waves the big stick

Leighton Andrews' announcement of a review of education delivery in Wales has met with a mixed response, but even his biggest critics have to grudgingly admire his willingness to shake things up and wave a big stick at some of the sacred cows which have been happily grazing in his departmental fields.

Earlier this summer he announced a review of the provision of Welsh for Adults, a subject this blog will return to in the near future, and he has also locked horns with the higher education establishment.

A pity that more of his ministerial colleagues don't have the same terrier-like determination to face up to some of the entrenched and very cosy arrangements in local government.

Simon Thomas for Plaid Cymru gave the announcement a cautious welcome, but wondered whether it was right to go ahead with a shake-up of education without tackling the wider problem of local government reform.

The problem Leighton Andrews has is that if he waits for Carl Sargeant and others to act, he will wait for ever.

The question which this latest review will address is whether schools should be left in the hands of the existing 22 local authorities, or whether regional education boards would do a better job.

The minister's line of thought was clear when he made the announcement yesterday:

I have said repeatedly I would not have invented 22 local education authorities. I have also said that the fragmentation of education authorities in the mid-1990s was one of the contributing factors for the downturn in educational performance a decade later, as effective challenge and support was lost in many parts of the system and time, energy and resource was dissipated.

I have given local authorities time and money to get their house in order but the evidence is overwhelming that this has not occurred.

Predictably, the response from the Welsh Local Government Association was a sudden rediscovery of the national treasure which is local democracy and the sacred link between our elected representatives (councillors) and our schools.

Although there are councils and many individual councillors who take their responsibilities in education extremely seriously, for a good many people the claim that councillors or even councils are the best guardians of the interests of our children's education is simply laughable. Just ask the people of Llandovery, for example.

As for the WLGA, it is hard to envisage any organisation in Wales which is less democratic or representative. It is bloated, opaque and represents the interests of only a tiny handful of council bigwigs. Thanks to its peculiar make-up 70% of its council members are from the Labour Party, and most of the rest are so-called "Independents", including Carmarthenshire's own unique contributions to local democracy in the form of Cllr Pam Palmer, who if she represents anything, represents everything that is wrong with local government in Wales, and Cllr Mair Stephens.

Whether things would be any better under regional school boards accountable to the Welsh Government remains to be seen, but as Leighton Andrews looks down the roll-call of recent Estyn reports on the 22 local authorities, it is not surprising that he has had enough.

Amongst those labelled unsatisfactory by Estyn are Pembrokeshire, Blaenau Gwent, Anglesey and Torfaen. Only just adequate were Cardiff, Caerphilly and Powys, among others. The list of those achieving a 'B' grade of good includes Swansea, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire.

Not one authority achieved the top grade, and as people in Carmarthenshire know, these Estyn reports on local authorities are rather blunt instruments which are often at odds with the inspectors' more detailed reports on individual schools. The grade awarded to Carmarthenshire erred on the side of generosity, as was evident from the GCSE results which were published a few months later. The reality was that almost all of the neighbouring authorities performed better, whether they are predominantly rural (Ceredigion and Powys) or overwhelmingly urban (Swansea and Neath Port Talbot). Only Pembrokeshire (unsatisfactory) was on a par.

The GCSE results and the way they are reported say a lot about the challenge which Leighton Andrews is facing. No matter how mediocre, every single local authority managed to produce a press release which gave the impression that this year's results were a triumphant vindication of their management of the schools in their care.

Whatever the outcome of this review, one of the greatest services Leighton Andrews could make to education in Wales is to find ways of taking the cancer of PR out of education. Far too many councils, with Carmarthenshire being one of the most obvious examples, are so obsessed with putting out a positive message about their services that they are no longer capable of seeing anything other than success.

Leighton Andrews certainly deserves an A* for effort.

Kev joins the Tea Party

A couple of weeks ago while nursing a dose of man-flu, Cneifiwr switched on the radio and caught that week's Any Questions?, a programme which is guaranteed to make anyone feel even worse, although not quite as bad as Any Bigots? which follows it.

Details of who was spouting from the platform that week now escape me, but there was a loony American Tea Party character and a female Labour MP who appeared to be a spokesperson for something or other.

One of the subjects raised was "The Living Wage". The Tea Party loon was against all forms of regulation, and gave the impression that the rot had set in with the Abolition of Slavery.

The Labour MP was passionately and articulately in favour of the concept, and she was very clear that this was very much Labour Party policy.

Of course it's easy to be passionate about these things when you're in opposition. The real test is whether you would carry out your promises when in power, and as it happens, Labour is in power with its closet Tory chums in Carmarthenshire.

At this month's meeting of the full council Labour leader Kevin Madge huffed and puffed even more than usual when the topic came up. He sympathised with the low-paid, he really did, he said as he peeled an onion. But it was all so very difficult, and paying more than the bare minimum would mean having to sack a hundred people.

Peter Hughes Griffiths, the Plaid leader, gave Kev time to reflect, and presented a motion calling for the introduction of a Living Wage at yesterday's meeting of the Executive Board. Since he is not a member of the board or a senior officer, the Plaid leader could only observe what happened.

Unfortunately, Kev had better things to do, and had gone for a spin in one of his limos. The job of pouring more cold water on the proposal was left to someone else, and it is patently obvious that whatever Ed Milliband and articulate Labour spokeswomen say, Kev is with the Tea Party on this one.

Perhaps Ed Milliband should come to Carmarthenshire to see what his comrades are up to.

Council staff on the minimum wage and struggling to keep their heads above water will find this particularly hard to swallow in view of the 10.7% increase in total renumeration to £209,498 awarded to the chief executive in 2011/12.

As Caebrwyn has reported, yesterday's meeting was a very sobering affair for anyone who naively thought that a council under the leadership of Kevin Madge would really bring about more open and transparent local government or increase social justice and equality.

With Cllr Pam Palmer in the chair, it was patently obvious that absolutely nothing was going to change, no matter what the electoral arithmetic.

So it was that proposals to begin a very modest pilot to film some council meetings were accepted after 18 months of deliberation, but a cross-party vote in favour of allowing the public to film or electronically record council meetings was rejected.

It has long been clear that Pam Palmer and other members of the ruling clique which has dominated this council for so long have absolutely no intention of letting the public see what goes on in County Hall.

The proposals which will now go forward allow only for a temporary pilot, and any footage will be edited (i.e. censored) before it is made available to the public. And as Pam made clear, "many issues" need to be resolved before even this damp squib of a pilot happens.

Unless our elected representatives put their collective feet down and insist that the council adheres to their recommendations, we can expect months if not a year plus of further foot dragging and delay.

Oh, and following this display of open and transparent local government, the council then threw out the public and press while it got down to looking at proposals for the Sainsbury's development in Cross Hands.

Horrible Histories

Rumblings of discontent over Carmarthenshire County Council's latest flagship development, the East Gate centre in Llanelli, continue to grow.

Just like the large new housing development proposed for Stradey Park, East Gate has been built on land at risk from flooding. The owner of a small business on the edge of the flood plain was told by an officer from the Environment Agency not long ago that if his shop flooded, the hotel which forms part of East Gate would be under 10 feet of water.

Perhaps the Odeon cinema may have to hand out snorkels and flippers along with 3D glasses next time we get heavy rain.

The latest snag in the master plan is the sudden realisation by the council that East Gate does not have enough car parking spaces. A minor oversight, no doubt, but one which you might have thought would have been spotted at the planning stage.

The new car park has spaces for 254 cars or thereabouts, which should be easily enough to cope with demand from the cinema (426 seats), but may well struggle to cope with demand from visitors going to the new theatre nearby (550 seats).

The council is desperately keen to attract major events to the new theatre, and one of the first will be the Horrible Histories tour in February.

So serious are concerns that visitors to East Gate will struggle to find anywhere to park that the Chief Executive attended a meeting in person with various interested parties to present proposals for opening up access to the multi-storey car park which sits on top of the town's market hall. The market is locked up and shuttered at 6 p.m., and anyone wishing to use the multi-story faces a fairly unpleasant trek through parts of the run-down town centre and its slightly scary flora and fauna.

If you very unlucky, you may even run into Labour councillor Keri Thomas on the look out for Polish alcoholics.

Apparently, the meeting did not go at all well, with one "stakeholder" having travelled a very long distance merely for the pleasure of shouting "f*** off" at our cherished council boss before storming out.

The multi-story car park the council is now so keen to press into use is about half-way between the new Odeon cinema and theatre, and the neglected and now closed art deco Theatre Elli. Lack of parking was one of the reasons the council gave for the decision to build a new theatre and cinema instead of renovating the existing building.

Theatre Elli is something of a thorn in the council's side ever since the busy bodies at Cadw decided to give it listed status a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the listing scuppered the council's plans to have the building demolished and the site sold off for development.

The council's solution to this headache seems to be a policy of active neglect. Nothing has been spent on maintenance, while millions have been lavished on the unimaginative new concrete and glass structures not far away in East Gate. When a tile fell off Elli's facade last year, the council erected scaffolding to "evaluate" the situation. More than a year later, the evaluation is still underway, and Theatre Elli has been made to look even more like an unattractive dump.

Before the scaffolding

Whether locals will be able to afford to go the new theatre in East Gate is another matter. Indications are that prices will be significantly higher than they were at Theatre Elli, to which the council will no doubt respond that its aim was to bring in big spending visitors from "away" rather than cater for Polish winos and the other rabble which infests the town (pace Keri Thomas and Meryl Gravell).

The naming of the new theatre also had the locals muttering angrily into their beer (or possibly Vodka Redbull).

In a mistaken exercise in popular democracy, the county council invited votes on suggested names. The runaway winner was "The Stepney Centre", with twice as many votes as "Y Ffwrnes".

Needless to say, the council announced that "Y Ffwrnes" had won. When challenged with the figures, the council replied that it was not a vote, merely a "consultation". And we all know about Carmarthenshire consultations, don't we boys and girls?

Apart from the theatre, cinema and the offices which we, the taxpayers, will now be renting while the council shuts down office buildings we do own, the rest of the East Gate centre will be given over to restaurants, cafes and retail outlets. Just like the St Catherine's centre in Carmarthen, all the signs are that only "prestigious" national chains need apply (including some of those multinationals which have found ways of not paying tax in the UK).

Whatever footfall there is in East Gate will stay in East Gate, and with any luck the town centre will soon be devoid of any vestiges of life whatsoever.

Llongyfarchiadau i Christine Gwyther!

Llongyfarchiadau mawr i Christine Gwyther am guro ei record ei hun am fod y gwleidydd Llafur sy wedi colli mwy o etholiadau nag unrhywun arall mewn gwlad lle mae pob twpsyn sy'n gwisgo rosette coch bron yn sicr o ennill. Mae hynny'n dipyn o gamp.

Dyma beth ddwedodd Dewi Prysor yn Limrigau Prysor (2003):

Roedd gan Christine Gwyther gwningan

Ond fe'i collodd yng ngwallt Rhodri Morgan

A cyn cyfri i dri

Roedd y bwni fach ffri

'Di lluosi i ddwy fil ar hugian!

Llandeilo - will the leopard change its spots?

Sainsbury's decision to pull the plug on its plans for a large new store in Llandeilo is a PR disaster both for the supermarket group itself and for Carmarthenshire County Council, which gave it such enthusiastic backing.

West Wales is one of the last remaining blanks on the Sainsbury's map, and it became clear that the supermarket group had ambitions in the area when it acquired the former Somerfield store in Lampeter after Co-op found itself with two supermarkets in that town.

Lampeter was never going to be a lone outrider for long given the way supermarket distribution networks operate, and the store group was soon busy with plans for a large new store in Cardigan. The proposed supermarkets in Cross Hands and Llandeilo would have been two more dots in the supply chain.

The surprising thing was always the scale of the proposed supermarket in Llandeilo, and the supermarket group itself was telling the truth when it recently described the proposed development as marginal. The truth was that a store on that scale would have struggled, and it would inevitably have had to suck the lifeblood from existing businesses in town to make the sums add up.

Even more questionable was the county council's decision to support the application in the face of the evidence.

Both Sainsbury's and the County Council invested a lot of PR capital in this exercise, and both have ended up with egg on their faces. Sainsbury's now looks like a petulant bully, and the collapse of the plan has dealt a further blow to the integrity of the council itself.

The council leader, Kevin Madge, finds himself under investigation for his part in the press release scandal, and there will be more calls for a root and branch inquiry into the workings of the council's planning department. What is now very clear is that the arm's length relationship which ought to exist between the quasi-judicial functions of the planning department and the council's executive has long since broken down.

Plaid Cymru summed things up well in its comment on the decision when it said,

It is clear the Council’s executive and Sainsbury’s are unhappy with their actions being scrutinised. The decision to withdraw the planning application indicates serious flaws in the planning process and disdain for planning legislation.

Sainsbury's has also been having a torrid time over its much delayed plans for a large new store in Cardigan. The plans met with strong local opposition, and after millions were spent preparing the Bath House site, the store group recently had to acknowledge that it was still trying to sort out problems with the stability of the land.

Just like Llandeilo, the proposed Cardigan store is too large, although unlike Llandeilo Sainsbury's will find itself competing for business with Tesco and Aldi. Tesco put in plans for a large store extension as soon as Sainsbury's showed up, and so Cardigan can expect the two groups to slug it out, most likely at the expense of the town's independent retailers.

That will be a great shame because Cardigan has been transformed in recent years, partly thanks to Ceredigion County Council but also partly thanks to the efforts of a number of local initiatives, such as Pwllhai. The result is that civil society is alive and kicking in Cardigan, whereas over the border Carmarthenshire's top-down, Big Brother approach views local initiatives with contempt and a distraction from the real business of doing mega-deals with Mega Bucks Inc.

Perhaps the most interesting comment yesterday on the Llandeilo fiasco came from Simon Buckley, chief executive of Evans-Evans Brewery, who was quoted by Robert Lloyd on his blog here.

Mr Buckley, who has fought hard on behalf of local businesses throughout the Sainsbury's saga, said:

I now challenge Carmarthenshire Council's chief executive Mark James (and the other senior officers in the council) to meet with me and other employers in the area to discuss what the council can do to support us.

I would hope that they would be able to offer a similar level of support to that which they (the council) showed in backing the Sainsbury's plan.

 

But can the leopard change its spots?

Raw Sewage and Amnesia: Stradey Park and the Stopper Notice

Update

According to unconfirmed rumours, Taylor Wimpey has moved onto the site ahead of the Welsh Government's decision.

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Anyone who has had their home flooded would count it as one of their worst experiences, and flooding in different parts of Wales this summer brought home once again the sheer human misery involved. You would not wish flooding on anyone.

As coastal communities dependent on tourism know to their cost, flooding and heavy rain don't just wreck homes. Quite a few Welsh beaches lost their treasured blue flag status this year, and others who depend on estuaries and inshore waters for their livelihoods (cockles, mussels, oysters and fishing) have also been hit hard as chemicals, raw sewage and other debris wash down to the sea.

The Welsh Government's decision to issue a stopper notice on the controversial Stradey Park housing development was taken because flood maps have been updated to show what Llanelli residents have long known - that the area is a C2 flood plain at risk of serious flooding.

When Carmarthenshire County Council met to approve an extension of the planning permission granted to Taylor Wimpey for the site, the new flood advice was ignored, as were residents' concerns about traffic, sewerage infrastructure and loss of open space.

Cardiff now has to decide whether to call in the application on the basis that failure to consider the flood risk contradicts Planning Policy Wales.

Reports from those present at the meeting earlier this week say that planning officers left councillors with the distinct impression that they were not allowed to consider the principal of development, only whether or not the time limit on outline planning should be extended.

Taylor Wimpey's solution to the flood problem is to raise the level of the land by up to 8 feet.

Readers may remember that we have been round this loop before, with the Welsh Government finding itself caught out in the minefield which is planning law.

What this boils down to is a county council and a major developer on one side determined to push ahead with the development at all costs, despite knowing of the flood risks, and relying on legal loopholes versus the Welsh Government and Environment Agency who are more concerned about the human and environmental cost of the project.

The council's determination to push ahead was clear from the Chief Executive's statement attacking objectors back in April of this year (see previous posts here).

A correspondent has pointed out that the diatribe included the following statement:

We hope that Taylor Wimpey will now get on site as soon as possible to build much needed new homes, including affordable homes, for the people of Llanelli.

Some Labour councillors, most notably Cllr Keri Thomas, have also used the affordable homes argument to sell the scheme.

Strange, then, that the scheme contains no provision for affordable housing because part of the deal agreed by the council with Llanelli Scarlets was a waiver of any requirement for affordable housing in order to make the site more attractive to developers.