One of the other recommendations contained in the Ombudsman's report was that the council should carry out a review of its planning enforcement policy. Let's remember that that recommendation was made in July.
Nothing at all happened for a long while, until recently when there has been a strange game of bureaucratic pass the parcel, all of which has had the unfortunate and no doubt unintended consequence of slowing matters down even further.
The game began in November when the Planning Department asked the Environmental and Public Protection Scrutiny Committee to undertake an "urgent" review of planning enforcement policy.
The council has five scrutiny committees, and it turns out that the Planning Department sent the request to the wrong committee because responsibility for planning matters comes under the Community Scrutiny Committee.
The Environmental and Public Protection duly deliberated and resolved to forward the matter to the Community Committee, which duly acknowledged the referral at its most recent meeting on 3 December. Minutes of that meeting are not yet available, but the likelihood would seem to be that the urgent review will have to take its place in the queue behind other matters in the committee's pipeline.
Odd, wasn't it, that the Planning Department did not know which committee was responsible for scrutinising it? Surely the council isn't dragging its feet?
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On 16 October this year BBC Wales broadcast a documentary on the planning enforcement case involving Mrs Trisha Breckman.
The case was the subject of an exhaustive investigation by the Public Services Ombudsman who delivered his report to Carmarthenshire Council in early July. The Ombudsman asked the council's officers to distribute copies of the report to councillors within three months. That did not happen, and the council, in the shape of its senior officers, asked the Ombudsman for a two week extension.
The broadcast went out at about the time the two week extension lapsed, and councillors still had not received copies of the report.
Peter Hughes Griffiths (Plaid), the leader of the opposition on the council, responded to the broadcast with a statement as follows:
"Despite the Ombudsman's report being published at the start of July, Councillors have yet to be provided with either a copy of the report or an opportunity to discuss the findings openly in the council chamber. This lack of discussion is a direct contravention of the Ombudsman's recommendation.
What is clear from the Ombudsman's comments is that the authority lost all objectivity in the case and subsequently failed Carmarthenshire residents.
The leadership of this authority must do better and never allow such an injustice to happen again. I expect the Leader of the Council to present the Ombudsman's full report at the next meeting of the Council."
Two months have passed since that statement, and the report has still not been presented to councillors. There were suggestions at one point that the report might instead be discussed at a meeting of the Executive Board. That has not happened either.
Calls for a public inquiry into the planning department were subsequently also rejected by the Welsh Government.
One of the Ombudsman's criticisms concerned the council's policy on persistent complainants, and it is perhaps for that reason that the Executive Board will tomorrow discuss an amended policy which is now called "Policy on Unacceptable Actions by Complainants".
The policy is a very one-sided affair indeed. The council and its officers will decide what is unacceptable.
The legal brains behind the document have a stab at defining "unacceptable", but do what weak and lazy lawyers always do in such situations: they throw in that little catch-all "includes but is not limited to" . The document is spattered with this phrase.
Of course council staff and councillors should not be subjected to violence or threatening behaviour, but the council gives itself enormous latitude in determining what constitutes abusive behaviour. Making what a council officer in his or her opinion considers to be an unsubstantiated allegation counts as abusive behaviour, we are told.
Not only is the drafting lazy, but it is also badly written and drafted. Take the following sentence:
"We will also consider any combination of these elements or any other behaviour which the Authority considers amounts to inappropriate conduct, to a single member of staff or to a group of different staff."
It is not clear what "these elements" are to begin with, and the wording is so opaque that it could mean whatever you (or rather, the council) decide it means at the time.
Stand by for many more members of the public being told that their behaviour is [but not necessarily limited to] inappropriate, offensive, abusive or unacceptable, depending on the mood of the person they are talking to at the time.
If you would like the Welsh Government to establish a public inquiry into the Breckman case, please feel free to sign this petition.
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