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One of the more intriguing discussions which took place at this week's monthly meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council concerned an abortive attempt to appoint a new Technical Services Director, whose portfolio of responsibilities includes refuse collection and roads.

In response to very strongly worded criticism by Peter Hughes Griffiths of the way in which the meeting to appoint a candidate had been handled, the council leader, Kevin Madge, told councillors that uncertainty about a possible future reorganisation of local government was the problem, while the chief executive blamed it on a political split among councillors.

It now seems that the truth was rather different.

There were three candidates on the shortlist, and the final choice was between two of these. One had extensive experience of managing the technical services department of another Welsh council and was a Welsh speaker. The other was a candidate from England with no knowledge of Welsh, although the job description stated that verbal skills in Welsh were essential (albeit with it a little get-out clause stating that the successful applicant would be sent on a course to give them very basic Welsh if they did not meet the criteria).

The Plaid and Labour members initially supported the local candidate. Unsurprisingly, Labour's Calum Higgins was absent from the meeting, although he did manage to send in an apology. It is understood that at one point a senior Labour councillor either proposed or seconded the appointment of the local man.

The senior council officers present preferred the candidate from England, however. They do not have a vote, and are supposed to be there in an advisory capacity, leaving it to elected councillors to decide. Obviously things are rather different in Carmarthenshire, and a fierce rearguard action was mounted to stop the councillors from having their way.

It was at this point that one of the senior Independents stepped in, confirming the description which has often been applied to them as the political wing of the senior officers, with a proposal to re-open the application process.

In the ensuing wrangling, the Labour councillors who had previously backed the local candidate suddenly switched sides, and voted with the Independents.

As some councillors pointed out on Wednesday, this farce cost a lot of money and did a great disservice to the candidates.

Peter Hughes Griffiths also pointed out at the council meeting that a second appointments committee set up to appoint service heads had also been ignored, with officers unilaterally appointing at least one service head recently without bothering to get the approval of elected councillors.

This point was side-stepped at the council meeting, as the chief executive wrung his hands over the politicisation of the appointments process.

Readers with long memories will recall that Carmarthenshire County Council has form when it comes to this sort of thing, and the Director of Education owes his job to the chief executive who initially used special powers to appoint him without referring the decision to councillors.

The hyper-active Head of Law and Administration is also there in an acting capacity only, although her predecessor retired nearly two years ago.

The South Wales Guardian reports on this week's meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council, and quotes Cllr Glynog Davies saying that the scandals at County Hall have become the hot topic among residents.

It also carries a story about Calumgate and the revelations that Cllr Calum Higgins does not have much time left for his various duties as a county councillor.

"Calum is like a breath of fresh air - a real man of the future", says Council Leader Kevin Madge, who went on the rampage at the council meeting earlier this week, accusing opposition members of bringing politics into the council chamber.

Readers may remember that Kev also gave his full backing to Shahid Hussain, Labour's candidate in Brynamman in last year's county council elections. Shahid got into hot water for a string of postings on Twitter, where he made highly offensive remarks about women, Tottenham Hotspur fans and David Jenkins, the respected chair of the council's Audit Committee. Shahid also regaled Twitter users with tales of his nights out clubbing with Calum.

Viewers of the live broadcast from County Hall may well have been puzzled about the role of politics in the council when later in the meeting Peter Hughes Griffiths, the leader of the Plaid group, made a strong attack on the conduct of a meeting to appoint a new director of technical services.

The committee was all set to appoint one of three candidates when suddenly, out of nowhere, a motion was produced and a vote took place, with a Labour-Independent majority deciding not to appoint anyone after all. Kevin Madge sought to explain this by saying that there was uncertainty about a possible future local government reorganisation.

Clearly the hymn sheets had not been aligned before the meeting, because the chief executive blamed the fiasco on a straight political split on the committee.

While Kev apparently believes that politics have no place in a meeting of elected councillors, it seems he has no such qualms when it comes to appointing senior officers.

Meanwhile, the people in Quarter Bach who want to know what is going on about the pension and libel indemnity scandals or Calumgate clearly don't read the Carmarthen Journal, which has nothing whatsoever to say about the goings-on at County Hall on its website.

The big news in Carmarthenshire, according to the Journal, is that an elderly grandmother in Carmarthen has got a Facebook page set up by a neighbour. The paper has been devoting acres of newsprint to "Super Gran" for weeks, and the hot news this week is that she now also appears in a video.

It looks as though Labour's 2015 election campaign in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr is over before it even started. Fresh revelations about Calum Higgins have appeared in the normally Labour-leaning Western Mail here.

The full-time postgraduate course in Cardiff; the part-time paid job with Llanelli AM Keith Davies; the role as county councillor for Tycroes; a whole string of committee memberships and vice chair of the council's Working Group on the Welsh language; add to that Calum's recent adoption as Labour's official candidate for the 2015 general election and his decision to move to Cardiff.

There is no doubt that Calum is highly ambitious and thrust himself forward, but the real blame for this debacle lies with the Labour Party in Carmarthenshire which must surely have known that all of these jobs and responsibilities could not possibly add up.

What they have shown once again is utter contempt for the people of Carmarthenshire in the belief that you can stick a Labour rosette on anything and it will get elected.

Well, not round here.

Cneifiwr managed to catch the last half hour of today's monthly meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council. Anyone with a strong stomach can watch the whole thing here when it comes online in the archive, probably from tomorrow afternoon.

The final half hour included the minutes of the now famous Audit Committee meeting at which it emerged that the Wales Audit Office had objected to two payments to the chief executive. That was back in September, and it has taken almost two months for the item to make an appearance in front of the full council and give councillors their first opportunity to even mention the scandal without being told to sit down.

When this tawdry episode in the history of Carmarthenshire is over, it is likely that people will look back at the Audit Committee meeting as the moment when it became clear that the great unsinkable liner had struck an iceberg.

After Captain Kevin Madge backed out of his promise to arrange a debate and provide "all the necessary papers" the week before last (the same week that he told the South Wales Guardian that the debate would be going ahead), it was clear that anxious passengers and crew asking for more information were not going to end up any the wiser after today's meeting.

Not mentioned at today's meeting were whispers in the media that someone not a million miles from Kev now thinks that the scandal is much worse than he first feared, and there had obviously been a pre-meeting meeting to agree tactics for handling awkward questions.

The strategy was to say nothing and let Linda Rees Jones, the council's acting Head of Law, do all the talking.

The Captain and the First Officer left the bridge, and Linda was running the show. She was clearly determined to go down with the ship, and she hung on grimly.

Peering from under a thatch of wild white hair and over some suitably scary half-moon specs, she told councillors that the letter she had received from the Wales Audit Office was "very frightening". Nothing further could be said about it at the moment.

A succession of councillors asked the Leader, Kevin Madge, for answers on a whole series of matters relating to the pensions and libel indemnity payments. Kev sat grimly in silence, and up popped Mrs Rees Jones to say that she could not say any more. The chief executive had also taken a vow of silence.

Cllr Alun Lenny (Plaid) pointed out that the council was justifying its silence on a piece of law which had long since been superseded. Silence.

Cllr Darren Price (Plaid) wanted to know if the police had been in contact with the council. Silence.

Cllr Cefin Campbell wanted to know what all this very expensive legal advice was costing the council. Mrs Rees Jones replied that the matter was still ongoing, and so she could not put any numbers to it, before she finally snapped. The council had to take the best legal advice available, and she resented criticism of the council's decision to spend accordingly.

Cllr Campbell added that he was being asked questions by voters and was embarrassed by what was going on.

For any readers who feel that Cneifiwr is showing bias and only reporting what Plaid councillors said, it would have been a pleasure to report on what the Labour representatives in the chamber had to say. What we got from them was total silence.

While Linda clung desperately to the wheel on the bridge, the grizzled Independents seem to have decided that their job was to provide the on-board entertainment, with Cllr Pam Palmer conducting the orchestra in a rousing rendition of Abide with Me. 

There was nothing to be embarrassed about. The audit report was excellent, apart from a couple of minor points. No other council in Wales could boast of such a fine report (stop sniggering at the back, all you readers in other Welsh councils).

Older readers may recall that someone once quipped that if Harold Wilson had been captain of the Titanic, he would have informed passengers that the ship was merely pausing to take on more ice for its champagne bar.

So it was that Pam told councillors that they should go back to their voters and tell them what a great job the council and its officers had been doing.

This was a wonderful report, and glug, glug, glug.

Don't forget to tune in to Carmarthenshire's monthly council meeting today at 10.30. The live broadcast can be accessed here. For those, including Cneifiwr, unable to watch live, an archived version should be available by tomorrow afternoon assuming that someone doesn't pull the plugs for, ahem, legal reasons.

An interesting thing to watch today will be how the puppet masters seek to prevent any discussion of the pension and libel indemnity scandals.

And as Caebrwyn has picked up, a Plaid motion calling for a debate on the latest Scarlets bailout has been rejected. The bailout was agreed with exquisite timing at the same time as the council was announcing draconian cutbacks to the sports facilities used by the public, and ahead of the annual round of budget discussions.

The full text of the Plaid press release is available here.

In other news, the South Wales Guardian is reporting that the Wales Audit Office may publish its long-awaited public interest reports on the pensions and libel indemnity scandals in approximately one month from now. Article here. The newspaper's Opinion column adds that sources within County Hall now fear that the issues flagged by the auditor may be more serious than they first thought.

Cneifiwr's understanding is that senior Labour councillors are finally waking up to the realisation that assurances they have been given by officers that everything is going to be all right could well turn out to be wildly optimistic.

And finally, staying with the pensions scandal, it seems that the trustees of the Dyfed Powys Pension Fund were kept in the dark about what Carmarthenshire County Council was up to.

The plot thickens.....

Update 13 November

Thank you to Anon for finding a link to a COASTAL project meeting held in September 2012 which provides some details of an investigation into allegations of maladministration which was being conducted by WEFO (the Welsh European Funding Office) at the time. Here is the link.



Carmarthenshire County Council's branch of the COASTAL project has used part of its very generous funding to produce a film (here) to tell us what it does.

The film is nicely produced, although someone should have used a spell checker for the small amount of text which appears, and it runs to just over 16 minutes. There is some nice upbeat music, lots of shots of people making things in craft workshops, and short interviews with people who have been helped.

There is no doubt that many of the people who have taken part have enjoyed the experience and learned some new skills, but the film and the project itself suffer from a fundamental problem. The goal, and the reason why the EU provided so much money, was to get people into full-time, long-term employment. Training courses and teaching people new skills were meant to be the means to that end. By that measure, COASTAL has been a truly epic failure.

The original budget for the COASTAL project was £51.7 million spread over six local authority areas across four and half years, and the project is now coming to an end. What the final cost will be is not known, but the film ends with the following message:

"By the end of the COASTAL Project we will have 

• worked with nearly 1,000 people
• supported nearly 600 to gain a qualification
• helped nearly 100 to get a job"

The basis on which COASTAL was granted funding in the first place was that it would help 9,000 people, support 5,400 to gain a qualification and put 2,870 into long-term employment.


What is noticeable from the film is that quite a few of those who have found jobs have found them in the council's staff canteens or at council-supported ventures, such as the Botanic Gardens.

Very, very few have found jobs in the private sector, and it is questionable how sustainable and long-term some of the jobs that have been found really are.

By chance, an article on this blog about COASTAL coincided with a short piece in Private Eye pointing out that the Westminster Government's decision to close the Remploy factories had been a disaster. Two thirds of the those thrown out of work had been unable to find employment, while a good many of those who had found work were former Remploy staff in Halifax and Fforestfach in Swansea. There the workers came together and formed a cooperative with their redundancy money (BBC story here).






One other aspect of the film which is extremely disappointing is that it is all in English. Not a word of Welsh anywhere, even though statistically around half of COASTAL's target client base in Carmarthenshire will be Welsh speakers. Having watched the film, it is a fair bet that quite a few of those interviewed can speak at least some Welsh, and several were more than likely brought up with Welsh as their first language.

There will also be potential clients of COASTAL in Carmarthenshire who are much more able to express themselves in Welsh than English. What about them?

It is fair to say that some of COASTAL's clients with learning disabilities might struggle to learn a second language, but for those who can speak the language or are capable of learning it, an ability to speak Welsh can be a very important asset when it comes to finding jobs in many parts of the county.

Employers looking to take someone on in a shop, a cafe or any other business which has significant numbers of Welsh speaking customers will naturally regard an ability to communicate in Welsh as either essential or a very desirable skill.

Perhaps there is a Welsh-language version of the film out there somewhere, but if so it has not been publicised by the council. Was the use and promotion of the language part of the agreement underpinning the public funding package in Carmarthenshire? If not, why not? Is this in fact just another example of the council's two-faced approach to the language, saying one thing in public, and completely disregarding it otherwise?

A couple of times during the film COASTAL managers express the hope that the project will continue in some form or other, but serious questions need to be asked before any new funding is agreed, and the Welsh Government and the participating councils need to ask themselves whether the money would not have been better spent helping set up cooperatives, as in Fforestfach.

Carmarthenshire County Council has engaged the services of Mr Timothy Kerr QC to help it with those uppity people at the Wales Audit Office in the matter of the allegedly unlawful payment of employer pension contributions to the council's chief executive.

As Caebrwyn has discovered, Carmarthenshire engaged the services of Mr Kerr before going on to introduce him to Pembrokeshire, and the two councils are now sharing the bills. When Pembrokeshire councillors asked how much this was costing, they were told that this was an ongoing engagement, and the legal taxi meter seems set to go on running for some considerable time.

Mr Kerr specialises in the law as it applies to local government, education, health and social care, as well as sports. His clients are made up of "public bodies, particularly local authorities, employers, schools, colleges, universities, national and multi-national corporations, sports governing bodies, players and athletes", and according to his profile on his chamber's website (here), they love him.

Strong stuff for the middle-aged executives in suits who must make up the bulk of his clientele, and his profile continues with a quote that, "although he is a genius, he is very human with it".

It is probably safe to assume that Mr Kerr's services do not come cheap, and that the clients who shower him with their love and affection have very deep pockets, or rather access to the public purse in many cases.

Mr Kerr's profile goes on to note that one of his specialities is advising and representing local authority pension funds. He has also helped councils deal with judicial reviews brought against them by people worried about care home closures and breaches of equalities legislation.

No wonder they love him.

Meanwhile, a second legal taxi meter is clocking up the ££££s in the matter of the chief executive's libel indemnity.