At last week's meeting of the full council the leader of Carmarthenshire, Kevin Madge, boasted that the other 21 Welsh councils would love a report like Carmarthenshire's utopian Annual Report and Improvement Plan, and that they should take a look at how things are done in Carmarthenshire.

These lesser local authorities and the general public across Wales will get an opportunity sooner than Kev expected when BBC1 Wales airs its latest edition of Week In Week Out (Tuesday at 10.35), as the programme takes a look at the Ombudsman for Public Services' report on the case involving Trisha Breckman and Carmarthenshire County Council.

This is a report, said to be one of the most damning ever produced by the Ombudsman, that no council would want, and it puts the spotlight on how things are done by the self-proclaimed best council in Wales.

The case, which began when Mrs Breckman complained about a serious breach of planning regulations by a neighbour, is a complex one and it is clear that she and her partner received appalling treatment at the hands of the both the council and the police.

The report has been kept under lock and key in County Hall since it was delivered, although the Ombudsman requested that it should be shown to councillors within three months. The three months were up at the beginning of October, and the council asked for a further two weeks to consider it.

Viewers of BBC1 Wales may have noticed that scandals in Carmarthenshire are becoming something of a regular fixture. In the last year we have had the scandal of the Delyth Jenkins case and the saga of the Towy Community Church evangelical bowling alley.

Not that this made the slightest bit of difference, of course. The council flatly refused to take part in either programme, and had the police trail the boys from the Beeb as they made the Delyth programme.

Cneifiwr understands that the BBC has been told by County Hall that the council will sue if the programme's content does not live up to the council's own high regard for truth and accuracy.

Let's hope that nerves remain steadier than they did in the case of Jimmy Savile and Newsnight.




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