Wild West Planning News

Discovering Carmarthenshire is a website set up by the county council to promote tourism in our county, and as it rightly points out, Carmarthenshire has a great deal to offer:

Travel over breathtaking mountains, through lush, green landscapes and secluded, ancient forests to the vast expanses of our golden sandy beaches. Lose yourself in the solitude of the vast countryside, follow the course of picturesque rivers and visit the stunning locations of our castles.... why not consider making Carmarthenshire YOUR holiday destination?

One destination unlikely to be promoted to visitors is the Cernydd Carmel Site of Special Scientific Interest, even though it is just a short detour off the A48, the route which most visitors to the county take as they head west.

Here is what the Countryside Council for Wales (now part of Natural Resources Wales) has to say about the area:


Cernydd Carmel is of special interest for its diverse range of habitat types which includes woodland, neutral, acidic and marshy grassland, dry and wet heath and mire systems. Additionally, an ephemeral lake at Pant-y-llyn, known as a turlough is an unusual feature in this setting. Caeras quarry, adjacent to Pant-y-llyn, is also of special interest for its pebbly sandstone deposits. Pant-y-llyn turlough is of considerable biological interest. The invertebrate fauna is diverse, with many crustacean species, the lake is also locally important for its large population of toads.

Cernydd Carmel covers 361 hectares, and is considered such an important site that it has also been designated a Special Area of Conservation under EU law.

You would imagine that being both an SSSI and an SAC would be enough to protect Cernydd Carmel from uncontrolled development including large scale quarrying, the construction of roads and as a site for dumping waste and bits of HGVs.

But you would be wrong.

This is what you would have seen if you drove past the site along the B4297 near Maesybont last September:

Note the heavy machinery in the background

Loading up rock

Thousands of tons of soil and rock were removed during this operation and taken to a large area of hard standing a short distance away. The hard standing was also the subject of an enforcement order under which it was supposed to have been returned to farmland, although this has not happened. At some point the rock and soil were then taken away by lorry to an unknown destination.

One lorryload was tracked to Trimsaran, although council officers have repeatedly taken the line that quarrying is for use on the farm only. Whether quarrying is normally permissible in an SAC is another question.

The trees in the upper part of the picture are no more.

Google Maps

The area of hard standing was briefly empty, as can be seen on Google Maps, but is now once again in use as a storage area for shipping containers.

Road and hard standing - Google Maps

And here is a view of a second area of hard standing created to store haylage bales. Ideas of what constitute agricultural vehicles have clearly moved on at Blaenpant, and readers will probably agree that the result is a big improvement on boring old views of unspoiled countryside:

Work on the field eventually ceased after the council issued an enforcement notice, with the council's planning officers declaring that they were satisfied that the land had been returned to a reasonable state.

The problem with issuing enforcement orders in cases like this, rather than ordering work to stop, is that they enable quarrying to continue for up to a month, just as long as the area is then quickly smoothed over when the council officers turn up. Boxes are ticked, and hey presto, the next lot of quarrying can begin.

Earlier this year work resumed, with further large quantities of soil and rock being removed, and the owner has built himself a track across the land (still an SSSI/SAC).

Special Areas of Conservation, such as Cernydd Carmel, are supposed to enjoy a much higher level of protection under the law than SSSIs, as Naturenet explains:

In theory, SACs have a very high degree of protection - certainly higher than a SSSI. A key difference is that for an SSSI, planning authorities have considerable discretion to decide whether or not an application will affect a site, and act accordingly. For an SAC, by contrast, if as a result of an application there is 'likely to be a significant effect' on the designated features of the SAC (i.e. almost anything, including things not within the boundaries of the SAC and the cumulative effect of several separate applications) then the planning authority must obtain an 'appropriate assessment' of the application and its likely effect. However, only if there is 'likely to be a significant effect' on the designated features of the SAC is an appropriate assessment required. 

You might think that stripping an SAC of its trees, vegetation, soil and rock might be classified as "a significant effect", but it seems that Carmarthenshire County Council formed the view that the landowner did not even require planning consent, making an "appropriate assessment" unnecessary.

Before and after pictures show that the entire profile of the land has changed in less than a year. 

When the construction of the track was queried, council officers were clearly left scratching their heads until they hit upon an Ordnance Survey map from 1881 showing a footpath running across part of the site. A minor detail is that the course of the long forgotten footpath and the new roadway are at right angles to each other and lead in entirely different directions.

The footpath is not shown on subsequent Ordnance Survey maps, and seems to have disappeared before the 1901 edition, but the fact that a footpath had existed close by in 1881 was enough to satisfy planning officers that no planning permission was necessary for a road.

A not so ancient footpath

Dairy farmers and other landowners who submit applications for new tracks and put themselves through the expense and frustration of dealing with the planning system may now want to consult ancient maps to see if there were once any footpaths in the general area before going ahead.

There is even better news for any landowner who has the misfortune to own a piece of land designated as an SSSI or SAC because it is now hard to imagine that anything they do to it would constitute a "significant effect".

This part of the area covered by the SAC/SSSI belongs to a local road haulier called Andrew Thomas who also has a sideline in keeping horses.


Mr Thomas will be familiar to readers of this blog (search using the name Breckman), the excellent West Wales News Review and Caebrwyn's chronicle of Carmarthenshire County Council. He also featured in an investigation by the BBC's Week In Week Out documentary series and a damning report by the Ombudsman for Public Services who investigated complaints into the way in which the council had handled planning disputes involving our man.

Those of us who believed that the council's very begrudging acceptance of the Ombudsman's report a couple of years back would mark the beginning of a new chapter with enforcement of planning controls in and around Blaenpant Farm and firm action to end abuses of the system have been proved sadly wrong.

As with so much else involving Carmarthenshire County Council, it's business as usual.

Power pose

Carmarthenshire County Council is clearly determined to push ahead fast with the controversial Carmarthen West development, with the press office announcing that work will soon begin on felling trees and clearing bushes along the route of the £5 million plus link road.

It will be recalled that the Welsh Government intervened and imposed a condition that the massive housing development could not go ahead without the link road being built first, and as the developers were not about to stump up the money, the council announced that it would borrow and raid its reserves to find the money in the hope that it would be able to claw that back at some point in the future.

The Executive Board met to consider proposals for funding the link road on 9 March, and as always unanimously approved a deal which will now have to go before the full county council. That has not happened yet, and judging from statements made by the council it is by no means clear whether it has actually hammered out agreement with the various developers, who include at least one company which would seem to qualify for the description of a "one man and a dog" outfit with nothing much in the way of assets.

So the bulldozers are moving in less than a month after the Executive Board meeting, even though the scheme has not been approved by councillors and even though there are question marks over whether the council has actually ensured that it will get its money back.

It is also worth recalling that the entire scheme is politically contentious, and that if the view of the people of Carmarthen as expressed by its elected representatives is anything to go by, there is near unanimous opposition to it locally.

The views of local representatives and the people of Carmarthen don't cut much ice with the recently appointed Director of Environment, Christina Harrhy: "This is an exciting and much needed development for Carmarthen", she opines, having lived here for three months after moving from Torfaen.

Christina may not be about to fill in those potholes along your road, but she is at least very excited about a £5 million project which will make a lot of money for a bunch of East Anglian landowners.

Ms Harrhy was until recently Chief Officer Neighbourhood Services at Torfaen, a role which included responsibility for roads and waste management, and she took up her new post following the retirement of Richard Workman, whose title was Director of Technical Services.

A failed attempt to appoint a new Director in late 2013 was described in a council meeting by Peter Hughes Griffiths, then leader of the Plaid group on Carmarthenshire County Council, as one of the most disgraceful episodes he had witnessed. This blog explained some of the background here, but in essence the allegations concerned external interference in the appointment process.

Those who were present at the meeting will recall the chief executive looking particularly unctuous and blaming the fiasco on a political split.

There were dark mutterings at the time that the split was engineered by Meryl Gravell after she received a mysterious message from "the other side" that the local candidate the appointments committee was about to anoint did not have His blessing.

Sshh! I hear a message coming from above!

At any rate, the appointment process was scuppered amid a swirl of acrimonious accusations.

Roll forward to October 2014 when the appointments committee reconvened to consider a shortlist of three candidates. This time the committee came up with the right answer, and Ms Harrhy was duly appointed, even though the job description stipulated as usual that an ability to communicate in Welsh was essential.

Despite not having those "essential" skills or any previous connection with the area, Ms Harrhy clearly has other attributes which made her the best person for the job. A sense of what makes her tick may perhaps be gained from looking at her Twitter feed.

It is common practice for civil servants, BBC journalists and others in non-political roles to put up a disclaimer on their Twitter accounts saying that just because they retweet somebody else's views does not mean that they endorse them. There is no such disclaimer on Ms Harrhy's account.

Surprisingly for a non-political senior officer, politics feature quite a lot in her Twitter feed. Among those who feature during the last few weeks, presumably with approval, are Jane Hutt (Labour), the veteran Welsh Government Finance Minister (twice in the last month); Rosemary Butler (Labour); Julie James AM (Labour) saying she was delighted to give the closing speech following a "fantastic debate" on education at Labour's spring conference; Leighton Andrews (Labour) and two tweets to mark the retirement from Parliament of Paul Murphy (erm, Labour).

When not tweeting about Labour, Ms Harrhy is keen to share with us gleanings from the world of management gurus, that largely American industry which makes billions out of common sense repackaged as hype, Studies in the Bleedin' Obvious, drivel and mystical incantations about "deep change", "growing your leadership potential" and becoming generally more awesome.

"If your boss thinks you're awesome, will you become more awesome?" is one question we are invited to ponder. Only Mark James knows the answer to that one.

Other advice is to sleep sprawled out rather than curled up. This is called a power pose. Apparently, if you practise your power pose before going into a meeting and adopt the "Wonder Woman" stance, you will pump up your confidence, be perceived as more authoritative and generally feel like a happy warrior.

If staff and councillors in County Hall spot Ms Harrhy with arms outstretched and legs akimbo, she's probably just preparing for a meeting.

You also need to be an energiser. If you want to influence others, you must be fully present and focused when you interact with them.

Who would have thought it?

Next there is the word "because". All you need to do is jump a queue and tell those who have patiently been waiting their turn that you are doing this "because", and they will happily let you to the front.


Using the word "because" increases your chances of getting you what you want by 33%, but don't try it in Aldi.

And finally, Christina Harrhy is obviously very keen on Dan V Forbes whose Lead with Giants programme aims to uplift over 10,000 leaders. Tune in and you too will benefit from pearls of wisdom including, "Never pass up an opportunity to say, I appreciate you".

As a follower of Dan, you will be asked to tweet your Word of the Day. Here are some recent examples: