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Roughly three years ago a friend who runs a small business in Llanelli was talking to a senior council officer about the council's plans for the new East Gate development. The plans included a lot of new office space, and my friend asked sceptically where the council expected to find tenants for the new offices.

Not a problem, came the reply, because if we can't find private sector takers, we'll take it on ourselves and move in council staff.

And lo and behold, that is exactly what has happened.

The subject came up at this week's meeting of the full council, and a number of councillors seemed to be surprised at just how deep the council had got itself into hock with the developers.

They shouldn't have been surprised, because the East Gate development follows a pattern which we have seen several times before, and the result is invariably that councillors, and more importantly the public, wake up to find that the future has been mortgaged as little clauses tucked away in the fine print of agreements are triggered when the council's optimistic projections turn out to have been far too optimistic.

In the case of East Gate, the people of Carmarthenshire are about to be hit with a double whammy, as we shall see.

The decision to redevelop a 5 acre site in the run-down centre of Llanelli crystallised in 2010, and a handful of senior officers, led by the Chief Executive, thrashed out a deal which went before the council's Executive Board in January 2011. The public and press were excluded from the meeting where the deal was rubber stamped.

The minutes tell us nothing other than that the deal was approved.

A month later the agreement went before the full council for final approval. Once again, the public and press were excluded.

The minutes note that while the public might have an interest in seeing that the council was managing its properties effectively and spending money wisely, those interests were outweighed by the commercial interests of the developers and the council's own need to keep information away from the public gaze.

Once again the minutes are sparse in the extreme. The deal was approved after a recorded vote in which all but two councillors (Siân Caiach and Arthur Davies) voted to accept the agreement. The minutes note, in true Carmarthenshire style, that:


One thing we can be sure of is that councillors were not given copies of the actual agreement, but a much shorter summary.

On one occasion the public was given a unique glimpse of how this process works when the council decided at the last minute to allow the press and public to stay to watch councillors approve the deal with Towy Community Church.

The report put before the councillors did not actually contain any untruths, but it was certainly misleading. More important in these meetings, however, is not the paper report but the presentation of it. What we saw was a marketing operation worthy of the most experienced timeshare salesmen. The positive is emphasised, doubts are dismissed or ignored. A small group of the usual suspects who know where the bodies are buried put on a rehearsed show of verbal fireworks in which claims, misleading statements and contradictions are thrown up in rapid succession.

The deal will save money, councillors are told. It will not cost the tax payer a penny. It will bring huge benefits to the county. It will create jobs. In the case of Towy Community Church, the project was being managed so successfully that the church would no longer need to borrow as much as expected from its bankers, but it would need a hefty subsidised loan from the council instead.

All of this is helped along by the standing orders. Only a minority of councillors will ask questions, and only a minority within that minority will ask searching questions. They can expect evasive replies, and are forbidden from asking follow-up questions.

In due course, the deal will be approved, and councillors depart, dazed and confused by what they have heard.

The clock then starts to tick, and a year or so down the line the booby traps start to go off.

The few short lines contained in the two sets of minutes from January and February 2011 were all that the public was ever told about the deal on East Gate. Since then practically nothing has emerged apart from a PR offensive to advertise Ben and Jerry's ice cream, Costa Coffee, Nandos and the Odeon cinema.

Until this week when the Chief Executive told councillors, four members of the public and lone journalist that the council had underwritten the cost of the development, and that unfortunately efforts to attract private sector tenants for the office space had been unsuccessful, although there was one potential tenant who might be interested in taking part of the space. How much space, what they might be prepared to pay or even who this mystery company is could not be disclosed. For all we know, we could be talking about renting out a broom cupboard for a peppercorn rent.

In underwriting the cost of the development, the council took on risk, and Henry Davidson Developments Ltd found itself in the envious position of being a private sector operator in a largely or entirely risk-free project. The laws of risk and reward which are commonly supposed to operate in a free enterprise economy were once again suspended.

The council tax payer will now be forking out £250,000 per year for 20 years (£5 million) to rent office space in the hope that it can sublet at least part of the space to private sector clients. The chief executive remains optimistic, as always, that the council will find them.

In addition, the council is having to raid its reserves to find £450,000 to fund the refurbishment of the newly constructed offices.

Just as with the Towy Community Church project, councillors were given a rehearsed blitz of claims from the council's leadership.

The council's portfolio of office buildings was in need of rationalisation. Moving people out of council-owned property would not only increase footfall in East Gate, but it would enable the council to rationalise and save money.

As usual, no facts and no detail were submitted to back up these claims, but the upshot is that the council tax payer now faces a double whammy as we are tied into a 20-year lease, while council assets are emptied and then put up for sale in a very depressed market at what will probably be knock-down prices.

What other booby traps were built into the deal with Henry Davidson remains to be seen. What will happen to the retail element of the development if businesses cannot be found to fill the empty units? Did the council underwrite that part of the deal as well? And, as almost certainly is the case with the St Catherine's Walk development in Carmarthen, what inducements and sweeteners will the tax payer have to fund to attract the high street chains in to fill up the space?

As for the theory that a large, shiny new development will lift the rest of the ailing town centre, Llanelli residents only have to look at the sad and rather shabby King Street and Red Street in Carmarthen to see that this model does not work. And with so much real and political capital tied up in its new developments, it is not in the council's interest to do anything which will divert trade away from its show piece developments.

Ras Glyndŵr - beth yw e?

In Carmarthenshire reading the smallprint really matters, as we can see from Caebrwyn's report here on Carmarthenshire County Council's guidelines on using social networking sites, including blogs.

The guidance warns council staff that they must not use such sites:

To breach confidentiality
To criticise or abuse users of the Authority’s services, any other Council
employee or elected members
To bring the Authority or any of its employees and/or its elected
members into disrepute
During working hours
......Employees are advised that the publishing of any inappropriate, inaccurate or
defamatory information/ material in the public domain may result in
disciplinary action being taken by the Council in accordance with its
Disciplinary Policy & Procedure.  Furthermore, in certain circumstances, civil
court proceedings could ensue...

Any council employee rash enough to break the rules will find that action may be taken against them, but presumably not in all cases. Possibly depending on pay grade.


So if, purely hypothetically, a senior officer wrote something on a social networking site about a member of the public which led to a court case, the code may not have been breached.

Back in the real world, the case between Chief Executive Mark James CBE and blogger Jacqui Thompson is dragging on. Originally it was due to go to court in early December, but it seems that the Chief Executive's legal team still has a lot of work to do and a lot of fees to charge, and so the date has now been put back to 11 February.

As predicted, the cost of this exercise is escalating rapidly at a time when council leader Kevin Madge is warning that the council has no resources for anything else (except a new Merc, of course).

Kevin Madge, who somehow or other climbed the greasy pole to become leader of Carmarthenshire County Council, is very keen to cultivate an image. He is Kev, man of the people, defender of the poor and weak, champion of open and transparent government and yet, somehow, non-political.

His stint as council leader got off to a very slow start when his Labour group overtook the closet Tory Independents to become the second largest group on the council, and Kev hit the ground dazed rather than running. The pre-election deal stitched up with Meryl and Pam meant that when the music stopped, everything was pretty much the same as before except that Kev got what really mattered: a bigger salary and the keys to the limos, as opposed to a chance to implement the sort of policies which his party is supposed to stand for.

The sad reality was there for all to see at today's meeting of the full council.

The agenda was one of the thinnest in recent years, consisting of nothing more than a list of reports and minutes from other meetings requiring the rubber stamp.

The Sainsbury's press release which councillors tried to raise at the last meeting was not mentioned once, apparently because it is now the subject of a formal investigation by the Ombudsman for Public Services. The Ombudsman's report on the Breckman case is being given a quiet burial by the Executive Board and will not be allowed anywhere near the elected councillors. No mention was made of the Ombudsman's latest report on a highly disturbing case involving a severely autistic young woman.

In fact, the list of taboo subjects is now much longer than the list of topics which councillors are allowed to talk about.

As usual, no sooner had the parish announcements finished and the hare started its journey round the track than Cllr Siân Caiach was out of the traps and in hot pursuit. Why couldn't councillors make recordings of council meetings for their own use? Where were the rules which said that this was not allowed? What evidence was there for the claim made by the council that other, lesser councils had been hauled up in front of judges when councillors had been allowed to raise issues not on the approved agenda?

As usual, her questions went unanswered.

Kev rose to say that a report and recommendations on recording would be going to the Executive Board shortly, and that the recommendations would be supported.

A Plaid councillor reminded Kev that the recommendations included an amendment to allow members of the public to record meetings as well.

Meryl Gravell rose menacingly and warned her successor that she was not going to stand for this. Other councils had started this new-fangled filming nonsense, but withdrawn because of the costs. Moreover, the recommendation was for a pilot only, and allowing a free for all would run the risk that eminent councillors might be quoted out of context, misrepresented or otherwise made to look foolish.

The rather bigger risk, of course, is that some senior councillors and officers would no longer be able to claim that they never said what everybody else heard them say.

Pam chimed in with a short, sharp reminder that the report would first have to go to the Executive Board before being returned for consideration by the council. And that's that, she snarled. It's not up for discussion.

The earliest the mangled remains of the recommendations could come back to the full council is December, but a date in the New Year (2096 if Pam gets her way) would seem more likely.

Kev clearly felt that it was better to stay quiet rather than risk annoying the old girls any further.

Peter Hughes Griffiths, the Plaid leader, pointed out that the Labour Party had voted with Tory Eurosceptics in Westminster to cut the EU budget, although Wales was heavily reliant on EU funding in regeneration and economic development schemes as well as agriculture.

Kev said he would not want to see any reduction in EU funding, although he failed to explain how he could square that with his party's support for spending cuts. It was all just the "Westminster bubble", he concluded.

Pam Palmer was still cross because someone had criticised her and a coachload of other Carmarthenshire worthies for meeting the Housing Minister in Llanelli (she forgot to mention her encounter with Lady Dena), before putting on her Girl Guides uniform to shrug off all this defeatist nonsense. "If we all work together, we'll succeed to the best of our ability".

So that's all right then.

Cllr Bill Thomas (Labour) who clearly had not grasped what his party had done, claimed that Labour was merely asking for a reduction in the proposed budget increase, as opposed to cutting the budget.

Cllr Caiach pointed out that under the EU's Habitats Directive the council could face losing funds anyway if it did not get its act together and clean up the Burry inlet.

The chair intervened to point out that the Burry inlet was not mentioned on the agenda. Neither is it ever likely to be.

Cllr Cefin Campbell (Plaid) rose to ask what Kev intended to do about the living wage for council employees. After all, Ed Milliband was in favour of it, and so was Boris Johnson for crying out loud. Arguments that paying people more would mean that they lost benefits were wrong. Surely, the aim should be to take people out of benefits by paying them a proper wage.

Up stepped Kev, friend of the toiling masses.

"We will be totally debating a report on this in due course", said the hero of Garnant, before adding that the resources weren't there, and that giving a pay rise to some might mean having to sack 100 others.

The ghost of Czar Nicholas II was probably thinking that whatever other mistakes he had made, at least he had not appointed Kev to pop out of the Winter Palace to negotiate with the workers.

If Kev had gone out to brave the revolutionary masses, at least he could have counted on the support of Cllr Bill Thomas who said he would not be voting for a living wage because of the risk that people would lose benefit entitlements.

Cllr Eirwyn Williams (Plaid) rose next to make a passionate plea to halt the planned closure of the primary school at Llansawel. The school at Caio had already gone, and very young children would be facing trips of 15 miles to school. Worse, this was killing rural areas because no families or young people wanted to stay in areas with no schools.

Kev replied that he was now beginning to understand some of the problems faced by rural communities, and he promised to come and visit. Better still, the Executive Board roadshow would be coming to Llandeilo in December! But these were tough times, and he wanted to congratulate the officers. Things were not easy.

The children of Caio and Llansawel can sleep better for knowing that.

More discussion of schools and school closures followed, although the Director of Education was absent just when he was needed.

Cllr Caiach was off again with a question about a land transfer at Cross Hands which is linked to the Sainsbury's supermarket development and the planned expansion of Maes yr Yrfa school.

The chief executive said that it all depended on the outcome of the Welsh Government call-in of the planning applications. If the decision went against the council, it would have to go back to the drawing board on that one. Perhaps Maes yr Yrfa will need to be renamed the Sainsbury's Academy in due course.

After another question about schools the Chief Executive finally snapped. Carmarthenshire had the largest number of surplus school places of any county in Wales, and in part that was thanks to parents who drove past rural schools to drop their kids off at over-subscribed urban schools.

Blame the parents, that's what I say.

Peter Hughes Griffiths (Plaid) had another go at Labour for abstaining in a recent vote on public sector pensions in Westminster. The implications were dire for many council employees, he said, and the likelihood was that they would end up being dependent on benefits.

Kev blamed it all on the Westminster bubble again.

Much of the rest of the meeting was dominated by questions about another innovative development scheme, this time Eastgate in Llanelli. Clearly some councillors have finally smelt a rat.

In a nutshell, the council is planning to move quite a lot of its staff out of council-owned offices to the shiny new development in Eastgate (complete with Odeon cinema, confectionery lounge, Ben and Jerry ice cream parlour and Costa Coffee shop, as the council's PR department recently told us).There the council has committed to paying £250,000 a year in rent for 20 years.

Would this move be permanent, asked Cllr Tyssul Evans?

Probably, said Labour's Cllr Jeff Edmunds.

Tegwen Devichand, who had previously had trouble switching off her mobile phone to the annoyance of the Chair, argued that this was all about saving money.

The Chief Executive explained that the council had underwritten the project, and had been marketing the premises in the hope of finding private sector tenants. One had been found, possibly, although he would not say who it was or how much space they might take. Council staff would be moving into some or all of the remaining space.

The waters became steadily more muddy. The chief executive said that another private sector tenant had been interested, but had pulled out. Unusually, he did not blame that on Siân Caiach, parents or the bloggers.

Part of the building would be occupied by council staff, another bit might be occupied by somebody else, and if another private sector tenant could be found, the council would move out of some or all of the premises. Possibly. This was the gist of what we heard.

Moreover, bringing all these council employees in would increase footfall, and the presence of council staff would be likely to attract private tenants.

By now, the water had turned as clear as mud. What was it about council housing department staff that would make the building so attractive to private sector tenants? We may never know. They may be there permanently, or they may not. But the council will be emptying buildings it does own to move staff into rented office space. To save money.

With that the meeting came to a halt. The whole thing had lasted just 1 hour and 15 minutes, but somehow it felt like a complete waste of time.

Bydd rhai ohonoch chi'n cofio'r ffrae yn nhudalennau'r Teifiseid ar ddechrau'r flwyddyn hon ar ôl i Gyngor Sir Ceredigion gyhoeddi cynllun i droi Ysgol Gynradd Aberteifi'n ysgol cyfrwng Cymraeg.

Ymddengys bod grwp o wrthwynebwyr wedi cael ei sefydlu i ymladd yn erbyn y Gymraeg yn ysgolion Ceredigion, ac mae rhywun wrthi'n anfon y linc yma yn anhysbys i ffonau pobl yn ardal Aberteifi a Chastell Newydd Emlyn.

• Members of the public are required to sign a legal undertaking that they will not record meetings, and provide their home addresses. No other council does this. The "rule" which they are agreeing to abide by is not in the council's constitution or standing orders.
• The council's ban on recording is not absolute because on several occasions TV cameras have been allowed in, but only when it suits.
• Members of the public who take up Kev's invitation to go along to meetings of the Executive Board to see "how decisions are taken" will be bitterly disappointed because the decisions are made at closed meetings of the board before the public is allowed in.
• The council does insist that children sign the undertakings not to record, as Kev could have found out if he had asked the Reception Staff who were ordered from above not to let them in otherwise.