Update

Plaid Cymru has issued a statement on today's events. Jonathan Edwards reflects what many people must be thinking tonight when he says,

“Now that we have a police investigation underway, the Chief Executive should be immediately suspended from his post. It beggars belief that the Chief Executive is in office whilst the police are investigating whether any criminal activity has taken place. Carmarthenshire Council, with the Labour and Independent parties at the helm, is bereft of leadership."

The full statement can be found at the end of this post.


Just after 4pm this afternoon, and shortly after meeting council leader Kevin Madge (Lab) at their request, Dyfed Powys Police issued the following statement:

Dyfed-Powys Police have now fully considered the three Public Interest Reports published on 30th January 2014 by Wales Audit Office, into matters relating to Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire County Councils.  


Kevin Madge's response to this has been to issue a statement promising a separate "review" by the Welsh Local Government Association, of which he is a member along with a lot of other Labour council bosses. Two fingers up to the police and the Wales Audit Office once again, it seems.

Interestingly Kev's statement was issued not by the council but by the Labour Party's press office in Cardiff.
 


Plaid Cymru Member of Parliament Jonathan Edwards and County Councillor Peter Hughes Griffiths have responded to the announcement made by Dyfed Powys Police Force this afternoon which confirmed the Gloucestershire police will be investigating whether any criminal activity has taken place in relation to the Wales Audit Office reports which concluded two matters decided by Carmarthenshire Council were ‘unlawful’.

Member of Parliament Jonathan Edwards said:

“The public, media, county residents and all observers immediately recognised the seriousness of the audit reports when they were published two weeks ago. I welcome the action of the police today as this situation clearly merits investigation.

“The Labour leader of Carmarthenshire Council, Kevin Madge, has been dragged kicking and screaming into showing just an ounce of leadership but he has failed. He has failed again today with his response to the police investigation. For the past thirteen days Kevin Madge has been more interested in issuing personal attacks on anyone who dared to question his extremely poor judgement.

“Now that we have a police investigation underway, the Chief Executive should be immediately suspended from his post. It beggars belief that the Chief Executive is in office whilst the police are investigating whether any criminal activity has taken place. Carmarthenshire Council, with the Labour and Independent parties at the helm, is bereft of leadership.

“The inaction of the council leader and his astonishing attempts to undermine the integrity of the independent auditor has seen the First Minister of Wales and the Labour party head office dragged in to try and sort out the mess Kevin Madge has created.

“Labour-run Caerphilly Council suspended its Chief Executive within two days of their audit office reports. Pembrokeshire Labour party has called for the immediate suspension of its Chief Executive. But what we’re seeing in Carmarthenshire, however, is that the Labour party is in meltdown and has absolutely no authority in the council it is supposed to lead.

“At every level of government civil servants advise and elected politicians decide - the same applies to Carmarthenshire Council. The Executive Board is responsible for the unlawful decisions they have taken.

“The elected leaders of the council should therefore apologise to the taxpayers’ of Carmarthenshire for their unlawful actions and resign. It is the bare minimum they should do as a result of the damaging audit reports, and for their subsequent actions in treating Carmarthenshire residents with contempt.

“Kevin Madge’s defiance, dithering and delay has seen the good name of Carmarthenshire dragged through the mud. His disgraceful behaviour in approving a tax avoidance scheme should alone make him hang his head in shame.”

Leader of the Plaid Cymru opposition group on Carmarthenshire Council, Councillor Peter Hughes Griffiths added:

“The announcement of the police investigation confirms the seriousness of the situation the council finds itself in, and fully justifies the concerns we’ve raised for the last two weeks.

“The response of the Labour council leader is totally unbelievable. How can he justify not immediately suspending the council's Chief Executive? His suggestion of an external inquiry by the WLGA is quite pathetic.

“Cllr Madge seems to have lost his grasp on the situation entirely. As Leader, he failed to take decisive action when the reports were published and he has failed to take decisive action today. How can he remain in his post? The public will think it disgraceful that the council leader has ducked the political decisions required in his role.

“With a police investigation confirmed, the public will now rightly expect every Labour and Independent councillor to accept these reports and the serious conclusions they have reached.
“We want to restore democracy to the council and restore the good name of Carmarthenshire. We are ready and open to talk to all councillors who are prepared to lift the county out of the mess created by the Labour and Independent executive board.”

Update

Cllr Jacob Williams is reporting over on his blog that Mr Timothy Kerr QC, the author of the secret advice on the pensions scandal to both Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire county councils, will be abandoning the smart surroundings of the Inns of Court in London for what will no doubt be a very expensive outing to Haverfordwest, where he will take part in Friday's extraordinary meeting.

Let's hope the Welsh weather doesn't scupper his travel arrangements.

Meanwhile the "Independents" who run the Pembrokeshire have been closeted with their Tory MPs and AMs to discuss the WAO crisis among other topics.


Tomorrow will see the first meeting of the full council in Carmarthen since the storm over the auditor's public interest reports broke nearly two weeks ago. Provided the sellotape and rubber bands hold, viewers should be able to view the meeting online, and it promises to be one of the stormiest sessions for a long time, even for a council which is used to X-rated horror meetings.

Will those present be ordered to stand as the Chair and Chief Executive sweep in at the beginning of the meeting? Will the Chief Executive and Mrs Linda Rees Jones even be there? Will any angry spectators in the public gallery hurl rotten tomatoes at the podium? Will the plugs be pulled on the live broadcast? All that and much, much more beginning at 10 am tomorrow (link here).

For those readers like Cneifiwr who are unable to watch or attend, you should be able to view proceedings from Thursday afternoon.

If you cannot get enough of watching councils trying to navigate through stormy waters, another treat is in store on Friday when Pembrokeshire County Council meets to discuss the auditor's report on the pensions scandal. That should also be available to watch online here.

In preparation, Pembrokeshire County Council has published a report which will be the basis for the meeting (here).

This is a weighty document, and consists of the council's response to the auditor's public interest report, the public interest report itself, the council's lengthy response to the auditor's consideration document and various other appendices, more on which below.

The response to the consideration document at the end of November was drawn up, it is clear, with significant input from Mr Timothy Kerr QC, the counsel jointly employed by Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire county councils.

Mr Kerr's actual advice was withheld from the WAO, and the report going before councillors on Friday also fails to reproduce it on the grounds that it is privileged.

There are limits to openness and transparency, even at this late stage.

Unlike Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire is still sticking to its guns on the pension pay supplement, and argues that a decision to rescind it could have contractual implications because the council incorporated a clause enabling senior officers to opt out of the local government pension fund into their contracts of employment. It does say, however, that it will "revisit" its decision.

These are complex legal and financial issues, but what is beyond doubt is that the council's claims that the pension arrangements would not cost the authority anything were utterly untrue.

Having argued the case back and forth, the document then goes on to a glossy appendix containing advice commissioned from a firm called Chartermarque. This snazzy document begins with a picture of steel and glass skyscrapers and a picture of the author, a stern looking man in a suit. Many pages of text and tables follow.

How much that cost, we are not told. Nor are we told how much the apparently ongoing involvement of Mr Timothy "Genius" Kerr QC has cost.

In addition to that, we can safely add quite a few thousands more in respect of the countless hours spent by council officers and staff in meetings and putting together reports.

Add to that the involvement of yet another company which pops up right at the end of the document. This takes the form of an e-mail sent by a Mr John Livesey of Mercer UK, which is part of a US-based global financial services and employment consultancy firm.

Mr Livesey is replying to a question sent by an officer of Carmarthenshire County Council, and his response shows that the pension arrangement will also have cost the two councils money in the form of loss of contracted out National Insurance rebate.

Apart from showing just how closely the two county councils have been in cahoots on this issue, it also shows that Carmarthenshire's councillors and struggling tax payers have not been told the full extent of all the legal and financial advice the council has been shelling out for in defence of the chief executive's tax avoidance scheme.

No, no and no

On a slightly lighter note, Oggy Bloggy Ogwr has taken another look at the whole saga. Oggy is one of the best Welsh bloggers, and his latest piece ends with a snippet from the proceedings of the National Assembly's Petitions Committee where members were gobsmacked by a response they received from Carmarthenshire County Council.

At issue was a petition signed by more than 4,000 people calling for Stradey Park to be given listed status (the council is busy turning the site into an executive housing development).

When it first responded to the committee, the council's answer was just four words: "No, no and no".

When asked politely to reconsider and provide a rather less offensive reply, back came the council's Building Conservation Officer with an only slightly less surly six lines of text, saying "no".

Residents of Carmarthenshire who have been putting up with this sort of thing for years may permit themselves a grin as they see that the council is now not afraid to dish it out to the Great and Good as well as the rest of us.

"Weighed in" is what you normally read in the papers when someone, usually someone higher up, intervenes in a row. Well, Carwyn Jones hasn't exactly weighed in to the scandals in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, but he has sidled up to them, coughed, and spoken in lawyerly code.

He has urged both councils to "deal with the situation and act", to "consider the law" and not think that they can put the auditor's reports to one side. Carwyn Jones also said he was surprised to see that the chief executive of Pembrokeshire earned £65,000 a year more than he did.

Obviously Carwyn needs to read the newspapers a bit more often.

The problem with all this is that Kevin Madge probably does think that digging his heels in, refusing to suspend the chief executive and attacking the auditor and the opposition is dealing with the situation.

A couple of years ago when Carmarthenshire received some extra money from the Welsh Government for something or other, Kev told councillors that "Carwyn hasn't forgotten us".

It's a safe bet that Carwyn wishes he could forget Kevin Madge and the rest of the Carmarthenshire Labour Party right now.

Update

Thanks to a reader for sending in the following clip from the Western Mail (February 2011) as a reminder:


SOME communities would suffer without highly-paid chief executives at the helm of local authorities, council leaders claimed yesterday. The comments came after figures showed the heads of local authorities in Wales and England are paid an average of almost £148,000 – about £5,500 more than the Prime Minister. Four councils in Wales – Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan – pay more than the UK average for the job to their most senior officials. But at a meeting of Carmarthenshire council’s executive board yesterday, councillors praised the efforts of high-salaried officers, who they credit with keeping the authority and the local economy financially buoyant. Council leader Meryl Gravell said: “I am getting pretty fed up of hearing about how we pay our chief executives too much. They are worth every penny that we pay them because if we did not...Carmarthenshire would not be where it is today (too true - Ed.!)... If we do not pay decent salaries we would not get the quality of managers that we have. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.” 


Thanks to our Assembly Member Rhodri Glyn Thomas , the Welsh Government last year had to give in to demands to take steps to rein in the salaries of senior local government officers.

The steps being taken are very hesitant ones, and involve the creation of an independent remuneration panel, something which the Welsh Government strongly resisted (BBC report here).

One of the arguments usually trotted out to defend bumper salaries for local government bigwigs is that there is fierce competition between councils to get the best senior officers. With the prospect of at least 11 Welsh council chief executives having to find a new job after the merging of councils in the next couple of years, this is now a buyers' market, and whatever happens it is unlikely that anyone will be competing to secure the services of Mr Mark James CBE.

Meryl Gravell, whose record breaking 13 year grip on the leadership of Carmarthenshire County Council came to an end in 2012, liked to say that if you paid peanuts, you would get monkeys when she defended the the council's inflated salaries for senior officers.

Making comparisons with other local authorities, not to mention other public bodies, in Wales has always been difficult because it involves trawling through thousands of pages of accounts and financial statements, not all of which are entirely transparent.

In preparation for the new era of monitoring the pay of top earners in the public sector, the Wales Audit Office has produced a very interesting briefing paper on the subject, which you can find here.

The three highest paid chief executives in Wales in 2012-13 were:

1.  Pembrokeshire             £194,661
2.  Cardiff                         £183,726
3.  Carmarthenshire           £181,645

Trailing in fourth place was, ahem, Caerphilly at £144,598.

Even the auditors had to admit that they were not sure how much of the Carmarthenshire figures was returning officer fees. There was also the added complication for Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire of the unlawful pension pay "supplements".

A further complication is the source of returning officer fees paid to council chief executives. Most receive fees from different pots for different elections (local, Welsh Assembly, Westminster, police commissioner and European Parliament). Carmarthenshire only includes fees (without disclosing what they are) for local elections.

In addition, the chief executive of Carmarthenshire has other sources of income not disclosed in these figures. They include his pay as a non-executive director of the Welsh Assembly. If you think Mr James was hard done by in relation to his peers, think again.

To put these figures into context, the WAO report provides figures for the number of staff employed by the different local authorities and their gross spend on services. Once again Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire stand out from the pack like sore thumbs.

Authority	Chief Exec Pay	Staff	Gross spend on services (£000)
Pembrokeshire	£194,661	6,273	£352,721
Cardiff	£183,726	15,246	£1,026,237
Carmarthenshire	£181,645	8,918	£554,100

By comparison, Swansea and Rhondda Cynon Taf each employed 11,000-12,000 people and spent £720m-£740m on services each in 2012-13.

It is not just chief executive pay where Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire stand out. The report also shows the median figures for senior executive pay by authority. Here are the top three:

1. Carmarthenshire                £118,410
2. Caerphilly                          £116,221
3. Pembrokeshire                  £114,135

Cardiff comes in at just £83,991.

Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Caerphilly also have something else in common. Now what could that be?