Saturday 28 April 2018

City Deal - a scandal in the making, and the wrong man for the job?


Western Mail 27th April 2018. Click to enlarge.

At a Neath Port Talbot meeting last week the council leader Rob Jones stated publicly that, at the moment, they would not be signing the City Deal Joint Agreement between the four councils. The decision follows another critical report from NPT chief executive, Steve Phillips. An earlier report, which I blogged about last October, similarly urged caution.
As you can read from the article above, Cllr Jones said "I am not prepared to put this council financially at risk on a wing and a prayer"

This is unlike Carmarthenshire where not a word of criticism about the even bigger 'funding gap' has been voiced, or even murmured. Why is that I wonder. According to the article there have been 28 drafts of the Joint Working Agreement, I don't know if that's an exaggeration but whatever the case, there is something seriously wrong and the City Deal is a scandal in the making.

I voiced a few thoughts, and facts, in my previous post, here are a few more.
The City Deal has become, somehow or other, the latest baby of Carmarthenshire chief executive Mr Mark James. I suggest that the other three councils take a very hard look at his record and strongly consider whether he is the right man for the job.
NPT, and Pembrokeshire both express concern about financial risk, Mr James cares not one bit about 'protecting the public purse', nor his own council's budget, nor the reputation of his council. Can we expect Carmarthenshire's council leader Emlyn Dole to say anything critical? No. Forget about that option, he sold his soul for the Leadership and Mr James' hand is so deeply inserted that he can no longer think nor speak for himself.

To leave Mr James in charge of this ongoing fiasco is a risk in itself. Even if it all goes ahead, it will plunge all four councils into an abyss of debt for projects which no one in the real world actually wants, or needs.

Let's have a look at the rap sheet shall we? Firstly there was the Boston Stadium, a massive burden on the taxpayer which he said wouldn't cost them a 'penny'. Then there were the other allegations from Boston which suggested exactly what our Mr James was capable of.
Then we move to Carmarthenshire and the Parc Y Scarlets stadium. A well documented drain if ever there was one. This is a private company yet it has been allowed to occupy the stadium rent-free and not worry about paying back a £2.6m loan...how many other Carmarthenshire businesses have been given such accommodating treatment, the council even pays rent to Scarlets' Regional Ltd for 'office space'. I was told, in court that just because Mr James likes rugby, that was no reason to be critical...

Then there was the 'bung' over the Scarlets' car park where Mr James' last minute intervention went directly against the advice of his own director of finance and directly against the interests of the Carmarthenshire taxpayer.
There's the Eastgate development in Llanelli where yet again a large chunk of real estate was gifted to developers and now houses, you've guessed it, council offices.

Another strange arrangement was the enormous financial gift to the Towy Community Church and the 'evangelical bowling alley'. For some reason a Christian 'social enterprise' was considered to be a suitable prop for the council's own struggling social care department. The fact that Mr James has, apparently, deeply Christian beliefs involving the literal truth of the Bible, has nothing to do with it of course...

And let's not forget the pocketing of council cash, and liberal use of facilities, resources and staff, to pursue his own private legal battles. None of which he has paid back. And while we're on the subject, what about the pension scam which gave him a nice little earner? And which he has also failed to repay.

The City Deal 'Wellness Village' looks set to be the white elephant extraordinaire, a vanity project which will leave a legacy of debt for future generations of Carmarthenshire residents. Llanelli wanted a leisure centre and a care home, not private health care and holistic therapy pods. I find it deeply concerning that councillors are not speaking out and are swallowing the spin and nonsense spouted by Mr James..have they not learned any lessons by now?

I can speak from personal experience and say, quite categorically, that the only thing that concerns Mr James is his own wallet and his own reputation, not the council, nor its residents. And as for taxpayers' money, no doubt he'd be quite happy to stuff it in the gutter. Aside from the financial aspect, there's the toxic culture, still alive and well, and the years of insidious threats to those who disagree with his world view; councillors, politicians, regulatory bodies, the press and members of the public.

Let's remember, once again, the words of the former Police Commissioner, Mr Salmon, who spent four years 'liaising' with Carmarthenshire County Council and came to the correct and inescapable conclusion that is was "Wales’ answer to a Sicilian cartel. It’s everywhere you look (thankfully only in Carmarthenshire – so far as I can tell). It extracts vast amounts of money from residents which it showers on favourites, hordes property, bullies opponents, co-opts friends and answers to no one, least of all local councillors".

My message to the other three councils is that I cannot think of a more unsuitable and untrustworthy person to be in charge of this City Deal. He has trashed Carmarthenshire, do you really want him to do the same to your neck of the woods?

Wednesday 25 April 2018

Swansea Bay City Deal...way behind schedule? A few thoughts.


The Western Mail reports that the projects in the Swansea Bay City Deal have just had a 'massive' financial boost and that residents in the four council areas will 'reap the rewards' from the various developments. The boost is in fact an agreement by the Welsh Government, 'in principle', for the councils to keep 50% of business rates from some of the various developments, should they go ahead.

As with everything else associated with the City Deal it is difficult to pick fact from fiction. To start with, the phrase 'in principle' suggests that agreement is conditional on something else, what that condition is remains unclear, is it UK Government agreement? Or agreement from councils who will 'reap' less than others in business rates?

Secondly, the actual purpose of retaining 50% of the rates is to try and offset the massive interest payments on the money each council will have to borrow. It is not some big future cash windfall to directly benefit residents as the statement suggests but will disappear into a bottomless pit. Carmarthenshire Council alone already has a debt of £388m, and rising, costing around £18m per year in interest.

The City Deal looks to be well behind schedule. Since the Deal was signed in March 2017 the four councils have failed to agree a Joint Working Agreement. This JWA will underpin the governance arrangements of a Joint Committee which will oversee the Deal. At the moment there is a shadow Joint Committee which, as it is not a legal entity until it's backed up by a JWA, cannot do anything.

One of the only objective, and critical, reports to see the light of day was the report to Neath Port Talbot councillors last October (see previous post here). It became evident that the 70-page draft JWA was being scrapped and a new one commissioned. Pembrokeshire also expressed serious doubts.

I asked Carmarthenshire Council, via Freedom of Information, for a copy of the scrapped report. This was refused under legal professional privilege ('advice' privilege as opposed to 'litigation' privilege). I appealed to the Information Commissioner on the grounds that the council were wrongly extending LPP to cover a draft report.

The ICO issued a decision notice last week upholding the council's decision, as the drafting was still 'ongoing', this was despite the £millions involved, the thousands of people who will be affected by the Deal, the requirement for transparency and the fact that the draft JWA (which, incidentally, had been made available to Neath Port Talbot councillors on request) I was asking for had been abandoned.
The full ICO decision notice can be read here, an interesting read, for what it's worth.

Meanwhile, another draft JWA was commissioned and it was hoped to be agreed and presented to councillors 'before Christmas'. This then moved to 'March'. There is still no sign of it and the leader of Swansea Council now says it will be approved 'within the coming months'.

Further signs of delay and disagreement concern the Economic Strategy Board. This will, as I understand it, representing the interests of the private investors and to 'raise awareness in the business community'. An advertisement for a Chair for the Board went out last December and so far there has been no announcement of Board membership, let alone the appointment of a Chair.

Back in January of this year a tender went out, led by Carmarthenshire Council, to appoint an events management company to plug the City Deal across the region, "to deliver high quality engagement events starting in early 2018 for an initial 1 year contract (with possibility of a 1 year extension)... ...develop a series of networking/engagement events working with the City Deal Regional Office and eleven City Deal projects, to attract and engage with a range of diverse audiences raising the profile of the City Deal and the opportunities it presents for the region."

A couple of weeks ago, two months after the closing date for the tender, and despite receiving a number of "high quality bids", it was cancelled with the notice stating that "we will not be appointing a contractor at present". Any costs for this failed exercise will be borne by the bidders.". An incredible waste of time and money all round.

One of the projects in Carmarthenshire, which I have mentioned once or twice, is the Wellness Village. The planning application has gone in, the ground prep is underway and a couple of million have already been spent. This is despite no Joint Committee, nor JWA being in place. Yr Egin, the new S4C and 'cultural' centre in Carmarthen has already been built and still hoping, presumably, for £3m from the Deal after a bid for EU cash was turned down.

Part of the City Deal involves contributions from the two health boards, Hywel Dda and Abertawe Bro Morgannwg. Hywel Dda is running a deficit of £69m this year and, as has been widely reported, planning major changes to our local hospitals, including building a big new one somewhere on the Pembs/Carms border. It would be beyond the pale for Hywel Dda to invest NHS cash into the Wellness Village, the premise for which is private luxury health tourism, at the expense of frontline NHS services.

Carmarthenshire Council is the lead administrative local authority for the City Deal and it's chief executive is the lead chief executive for the Deal. Enough said. Rumours have circulated over the last few months that the other councils have been kept in the dark...with that scenario, what hope is there that our own councillors will ever be fully and accurately briefed, let alone council taxpayers.
There is not a glimmer, so far, of where the £637m of private funding is coming from, if it's coming from anywhere. I also suspect that the job creation figures are wildly exaggerated. If an economic boost should materialise, then I doubt this will be felt in the extensive rural areas of west Wales.

The City Deal Regional Office appears to be on the payroll of Carmarthenshire Council so I sent a few questions their way. The questions, and responses can be seen in full below but provide little substance. And as for the response to question 6, with the involvement of private investment, I have little faith that anything will be transparent.
There has been nothing yet to suggest that the City Deal is anything more than one big PFI scheme which will leave council taxpayers beholden to private investors for years to come. With big private companies such as Carillion, and now Capita, on the rocks, an objective approach to future risk to the public purse is critical.

As for the 'Wellness Village', this has all the hallmarks of a County Hall vanity project, jobs for the boys and contracts and deals for the usual suspects. And don't forget, 'lead chief executive' Mark James has his own business and property interests which he didn't bother to declare...and a track record which hardly inspires trust. Whatever the case, I hope our councillors keep a beady eye on progress and developments, cut through the spin and always remember that this 'exciting' and 'once in a generation' Deal may not be all as it seems.

One Carmarthenshire resident tweeted this morning that the City Deal "is a scandal of epic proportions, there seems to be lots of stuff for non-elected people spending money they don't have on stuff no "real" people want". 
Sums it up pretty well.

City Deal Regional Office Qs & As

1. Current status of the Joint Working Agreement and governance and accountability structure.

 The Joint Working Agreement is currently being finalised. We expect it to go to all four regional councils for approval by the early summer.

 2. Why have several projects commenced, including the Wellness Village, without a JWA in place?

 Apart from site preparation works, no work has started on the Village. Subject to planning consents and the approval of the City Deal business case, work is earmarked to start on site towards the end of 2018.

 3. Membership and governance arrangements of the Joint Committee

The Joint Committee will be made up of the leaders and chief executives of the four regional councils, as well as non-voting, co-opted members from Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, Hywel Dda University Health Board, Swansea University and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

4. Membership and governance of the Economic Strategy Board. An advertisement for an ESB Chair went out in December 2017 - who was appointed, when was the individual appointed, and who made the appointment.

The ESB chair has not yet been appointed.

5. Current status with regards to private investment for each City Deal project, the companies/private investors currently involved and the level of financial commitment secured so far. 

Subject to what we have said in response to question two about the need for business case approvals for City Deal projects from the UK and Welsh Governments, we are working towards our target of £637m from the private sector. There is no suggestion or indication that the money will not be forthcoming.

6. What specific measures will the City Deal partners and the Joint Committee take to ensure full public transparency and accountability?

Usual rules regarding public access to meetings will apply to Joint Committee. Minutes from Joint Committee meetings will be published online.

* * *

Update 30th April; It has been reported over the past day or two that, 5 months after the 'advert' went out, a 'preferred' Chair for the ESB (see post below) has been selected. The appointment of US businessman, Mr Edward Tomp, a director of Valero oil based in Pembrokeshire is conditional on the four councils agreeing to the Joint Working Agreement, currently in its umpteenth 'fluffy' draft and most recently rejected by Neath Port Talbot council (see later post, which I hope Mr Tomp will read and inwardly digest...)

Friday 20 April 2018

Caerphilly news...


With the news that the long-running Caerphilly council pay scandal, involving three of it's most senior officers, including its chief executive, is set to rise to £3.6m, today's editorial in the Western Mail questions the system which has allowed this to happen, it's worth a read.

I have mentioned the situation in Caerphilly numerous times on this blog, and made parallels with Carmarthenshire, most recently here, and both situations arose following 'unlawful' findings by the Wales Audit Office.

The difference in Carmarthenshire, where there was a secret pay rise via an unlawful pension 'arrangement' and the unlawful libel indemnity, was that the council leadership were (and still are) so firmly in the pocket of the chief executive that they refused to suspend him, it was only when the pressure from outside the council began to mount that he eventually, and 'voluntarily', 'stepped-aside' whilst the police gave it all a cursory glance. On that point I find it incredible that the police spent a mere three months chewing over some paperwork (and did not correspond with either County Hall or the CPS) yet found a spare 18 months to investigate, question and eventually charge me, all of which was entirely fruitless.

Anyway, in some ways we are fortunate that no 'official' action has been taken against Mr James as the taxpayers of Carmarthenshire would be footing a similar bill.
At the end of the day it is cheaper, and easier all round, to allow him to get away scot free with the audit office findings, and the substantial associated costs of the scandals; allow him free use of council resources for his private interests; take no action over decisions which deliberately disadvantage the taxpayer; ignore the fact he has undeclared business interests; allow him to pervert the constitution to appoint his loyal disciples; allow him to economise with the truth, threaten the press, mislead and threaten councillors, interfere with and block democratic debate, etc etc.

As has been shown, with the farce in Caerphilly, getting shot of senior officers is such an extraordinarily tortuous and expensive process, it's virtually impossible. The protection afforded to senior officials is more or less total and way above the usual employment protection rules, and as the editorial says 'Our councils are simply unable to manage senior staff when things go wrong'.

It's also a matter of semantics. What is politely termed 'unlawful' in world of senior council officialdom, is quite simply illegal, fraudulent or downright immoral to the rest of us.

The editorial concludes by speculating on whether Mr O'Sullivan will be given a pay out and if so, it would, in general terms "be a shameful day for the politicians in Cardiff Bay and Westminster who have been unable to deal with the problems that undoubtedly exist in the most senior ranks of local authorities across the UK."

The "problem" certainly exists in the senior ranks of Carmarthenshire. It's time for the system to change and County Hall Carmarthen would be a good place to start.

FOI news - Office costs


A Freedom of Information response arrived today which shows that the Plaid/Independent executive spent over £8,000 on refurbishing their offices since August last year;

Click to enlarge

We can all recall those 'difficult decisions' made in February's budget yet this decision didn't seem particularly troublesome did it? £8,000 could have been spent on some books for our schools, fixed a few potholes or contributed to the care of a vulnerable resident or two, the list is endless.

And another point, during a discussion over the council's new Local Housing Company at last week's council meeting, Cllr Dole argued that it would help local builders 'prosper' and Executive Member Linda Evans said "We want to keep the Carmarthenshire pound in Carmarthenshire".
With at least three of the providers in the above FOI response based out of the county, it seems that these noble gesture are little empty, unless of course there are no carpet fitters, printers or furniture suppliers in Carmarthenshire....

Monday 16 April 2018

Council epetitions - is the four year wait nearly over? - updated


Update 18th April;

It would seem, from the webcast, that my post below had been read and noted.
Cllr Rob James presented the Motion and noted that approval had been given for an epetition page in June 2015 although it was first recommended in 2014, but we were still waiting. He cited recent examples of a lack of transparency including the incident with the BBC reporter last week.

Plaid leader Emlyn Dole demanded that the Motion be withdrawn as a vote had been taken 3 years ago. The proposer refused to withdraw. Mr Dole went on to say about the inadequate software (as I mentioned below) which didn't allow for a bilingual service. Cllr James noted that a member of the public (me) had been told (two years ago) that a solution to this issue was being looked at 'in house'.

Other Plaid councillors, and the chief executive, then claimed that an epetition page was not possible without a procedure to back it up. This is not only nonsense (paper petitions can already be presented) but merely a ploy to stall and frustrate further moves toward transparency.
If constitutional tweaks were necessary, then the council have had four years to sort this out, and to find a bilingual service. It's inexcusable.

Instead of embracing and reinforcing an an important principle of public engagement and transparency, Emlyn Dole chose to put it back in the long grass where it has languished for four years and his party, along with the Independents voted to reject the Motion by 31 votes to 22.

Why would anyone vote against this at all? Unless they were following orders... Shame on them.

Let's hope this particularly prolonged case of municipal constipation gets moving soon.

The debate can be seen here.

In a few other developments, Labour's Kevin Madge was nominated as Vice Chair of the council for 2018/19 (he will then be Chair the year after that), presumably this was a reward for years of loyal service rubber stamping the chief executive's unlawful activities. There was a long argument over whether or an amendment to another Motion was admissible or not, and the meeting ended with councillors voting unanimously to accept the Independent Remuneration Panel's recommendations and give themselves all a 1.49% pay rise.

* * *

Wednesday's full council agenda includes a Motion put forward by Cllr Rob James (Lab), elected last May, asking the Executive Board to introduce an epetitions facility on the council website.

There is, however, some history to this. The damning WLGA governance report published in 2014, stated, amongst the 39 recommendations, that an epetition page should be set up within three months.

In November 2014 the council's own IT Strategy fully supported the recommendation;

"Detachment from the political process is a big issue, with election turnout being as little as 23% in one area of Carmarthen in the last Council Election. Everyone can view e-petitions online and they are easy to sign. They encourage transparency when petitions are debated and increase public engagement with the Local Authority
E-petitions are not a new feature of Local Authorities but are not common in Wales. Carmarthenshire Council has a chance to get ahead in digital communication as e-petitions are introduced."

The WLGA recommendation was eventually accepted and approved by full council at an Extraordinary meeting in June 2015.

Several months later, in February 2016, I asked the Monitoring Officer, Linda Rees Jones when the epetition page was likely to appear and I was told that their software providers couldn't supply a bilingual service so in-house options were being considered, this was despite the website itself being bilingual and the Assembly providing a bilingual service for several years...

The process, if ever it should materialise, would be similar to the Assembly and parliamentary  epetition systems. Petitions with a certain number of signatures would trigger a council/committee debate, this might be a percentage of the electorate, or a fixed number. Guidance would be provided on the webpage and any rejected petitions, ie those which did not meet the approval of the chief executive, would be listed with brief, valid reasons why they were unacceptable.

It's all quite straightforward and would, quite simply, provide residents with a direct voice to raise issues, or even new ideas, with the council. Epetitions are, as I'm sure you are aware, increasingly popular and a quick and easy way for us to register our agreement, comment on and support a particular cause.

As this epetition page was recommended four years ago and the council has already agreed to do this three years ago, a vote next week is not really necessary. All that is required is a date when it will finally be up and running.
The 'inadequate software' argument is wearing a bit thin.

As regular readers will be well aware, even small measures to improve transparency, public engagement and accountability have been quite an epic struggle, and as Friday's shameful treatment of a BBC journalist shows, the nonsense continues. The obstacle to progress has always been, and still is, the control freak at the top.

We'll see what happens.

Friday 13 April 2018

BBC reporter barred from council Executive Board Member decision meeting


An interesting issue developed this morning over press access to Executive Board Member (EBM) Decision meetings.
A BBC reporter had been covering a story about plans to reroute a public footpath which happened to pass through the midst of a nudist campsite up in the hills of Llanllwni, the story had even featured on the news. There were various objections and arguments put forward and a full report, which also included all the names and addresses of neighbours and objectors, had been published on the council website prior to the meeting. In other words, there was no exempt information.

However, the reporter was barred from attending and tweeted;


Under present legislation it seems that there is no requirement for a council to allow access to these meetings, which is rather different to saying that the public and press are actually barred. The 'no requirement' loophole is being used by the council as a barrier to transparency, and should be closed.

It was only after the WLGA report in 2014 on the dire state of the council's governance arrangements that non-executive councillors were finally allowed attend individual EBM meetings, prior to that it was virtually impossible to call-in or scrutinise, or even observe, a decision taken by an individual Executive Board member and was a convenient route to a quiet rubber stamp.

There have been some very odd and secretive EBM meetings, including a notorious one in 2013 on 'press freedom', and a whole series where Meryl Gravell dished out millions of pounds in questionable grants.
These meetings make decisions on RIPA/Data Protection policy, social care charges, HR policy, housing policy, fixed penalties, more grants, to name but a few

The subject of this meeting this morning had already been reported in the press, the report was on the council website, and even included directions of how to get there. The council's constitution, for what it's worth, allows public access to all open meetings, so unless there is exempt information, there is no reason whatsoever why these EBM meetings should not be designated as public meetings and open to all.

I hope the reporter makes a formal complaint. 

Thursday 12 April 2018

Town Hall rich list - Carmarthenshire


With the annual Taxpayers Alliance Town Hall rich list published yesterday Carmarthenshire's entry, for senior officers pocketing over £100,000 per year, with pension contributions, looks relatively brief, even with two over £150,000:




However, the figures were taken from the 2016/17 council accounts which showed a somewhat confusing picture, muddled by in-year restructuring and retirements. A more realistic picture can be found in the annual pay policy approved last month:

Chief Executive, £171,539
Corporate Directors, £123,218 x 5 (one is also deputy chief executive)
Assistant Chief Executive, £102,917
Heads of Service, £90,709 x 14

If we add the annual pension pots, roughly about 12%, the 14 heads of service hover towards £100,000 apiece, and so the total bill for the 21 top brass, (at the top end of the pay scales), in this largely rural county, is somewhere in the region of £2.4m, give or take a few grand.

The chief executive is not part of the local government pension scheme, not since the unlawful pension pay rise 'arrangement' exposed by the Wales Audit Office, and bloggers, in 2014. The second officer over £150,000 is the Director of Communities, Jake Morgan, who receives an extra 10% for being deputy chief executive, a deputy is essential of course as Mr James is a busy man.

The chief executive's pay is bumped up by returning officer fees and the fees for the May 2017 local elections will show up in the next accounts. In 2012 it was £20,000 and, controversially, paid in advance and before the number of contested seats were known. And more than many residents could hope to earn in a year. Fees from other elections (and there's been an election bonanza over the past couple of years) are paid to him direct by Welsh or Westminster governments, so do not show up in council accounts.

Mr James also enjoys the fringe benefits of having publicly funded staff, resources and computer facilities at his disposal to pursue his private legal battles, as I have discovered.
When he nearly retired a couple of years ago he almost walked off with £446,000, a remarkable reward for a rap sheet which included illegal payment scandals and the creation of a toxic, bullying, anti-democratic culture. In the end, he decided to stay.

So, as the potholes grow and multiply, so do the wallets of the top brass. If nothing else, this is probably one of the arguments for reducing the number of councils as these figures, in greater or lesser degrees are replicated across 22 local authorities in Wales, serving a total population roughly the size of Greater Manchester.

The Welsh Government are still considering a £95,000 cap on exit packages, and a few years back Plaid tried unsuccessfully to stop the extra cash for returning officers for local elections, arguing that it was part of the job description anyway. Attempts by the Labour group to reduce the pay of two new directors, to about £110,000, were defeated last year. The CEO joined the 'debate' in the council chamber and proceeded, shamelessly, to influence the vote.
Any post with a remuneration of over £100,000 requires the approval of full council, so although we have seen this process manipulated more than once in Carmarthenshire, control over senior pay, whilst subject to national pay scales, ultimately lies with the councillors.

When a Labour councillor raised the subject of eye-watering levels of chief officer pay a few weeks ago Mr James took to his keyboard to write an angry email berating the councillor for publicly embarrassing him and his colleagues. Presumably Mr James is burning the midnight oil sending another one to the Taxpayers' Alliance...

Wednesday 4 April 2018

Those unlawful libel indemnity clauses....a call to arms


(Later post, 28th July here)

The council AGM, coming up next month, often provides the opportunity to 'update' the council's constitution with any amendments which may be deemed necessary. As we know this is currently the remit of the 'cross-party Constitution Review Working Group', aka, chief executive Mr James and Legal Linda.

Back at the AGM of 2008, buried within a mound of papers and assorted subsections was the libel indemnity clause. This went unnoticed by council despite, in 2006, having adopted the Order preventing the public funding of defamation claims by officers.

My attempts to highlight this anomaly fell, for a while, on largely deaf ears. This was until a simpler, and indeed more accurate description was suggested to me to describe what was, essentially, an unlawful fund, or a public resource if you will, which could be used to try and silence critics, and the press.

Mr James, as has been recorded in depth, then availed himself of this unlawful facility in his 2012 counterclaim, suing me, as a defence tactic, for referring to this very facility in terms which he found distasteful ...though not for several months after I had published the two words...

Just a day or two prior to the 2012 meeting, (in which he remained whilst the then Labour/Independent Executive Board kindly, and illegally, bankrolled him for whatever he wanted), he had discussed and amended the report, recommending his own funding, with Linda Rees Jones. As a sweetener, he added that if he won any damages, the award would be handed over to the council, he didn't want to personally benefit. Bless.

The rest, of course, is history. I got stuffed in court and Mr James immediately started pursuing me for his damages. They have always been 'his' damages by the way, the promise to his employers in 2012 meant nothing.  The damning Wales Audit Office libel indemnity report was published in January 2014 (there were two, let's not forget the secret pay rise pension scandal) and led to the criminal investigation and the Extraordinary council meeting the following month when it was decided to 'suspend' the offending clauses from the constitution, but not remove them.

The matter of the indemnity came up last year at the hearing where, due to my inability to pay and his rejection of offers, Mr James was attempting to take my home. To date, his pursuance of these damages has cost more than the damages themselves.

The judge, last year was, shall we say, surprised that Mr James had promised to hand over the damages elsewhere, and led him to comment that he clearly wasn't in urgent need of the money. There were more surprises as it was revealed he'd changed his mind and was, in fact, keeping the money himself.

Move forward to last month's hearing and it happened to be in front of the same judge, and he had remembered the indemnity stuff.

Once again he remarked that Mr James was not in need of this money.
This wasn't a reference to his large salary of course, nor his business and property empire, that would be inappropriate, but his promise (now broken) to hand the cash elsewhere.

Anyway I am digressing.
Next month is the ideal opportunity for any strong minded and law-abiding councillors to call for the final removal of these illegal, and profoundly unhealthy clauses, currently in their fourth year of suspended animation. It is only the arrogance of Mr James, not the law, which keeps them on this important, defining document. The removal might give him a bloody nose, metaphorically speaking of course, but it won't be the end of the world.

The clauses, which remain unique in local government circles, can be found here, but to clarify, they are as below, giving the Chief Executive (he is also the Head of Paid Service), the Director of Resources and the Monitoring Officer the delegated power to sue, and for the good taxpayers of Carmarthenshire to pay for it.



The 'legal position' has long been 'clarified'; it was unlawful, illegal, ultra vires, however you want to put it, and given that money was indeed involved, potentially fraudulent. As it backfired so spectacularly last time, it will never be used again. We hope...

Emlyn Dole, firmly under the guiding hand of the manipulative Mr James, has refused to remove them. Unless someone puts their head over the parapet they will remain as a lasting legacy to local government idiocy and a chilling memorial to that toxic culture, bred and lovingly maintained by the chief executive.

I look forward to a Motion appearing on the agenda of the AGM to remove these clauses once and for all.

* * *

Whilst I'm on the subject of lasting legacies, and in other news, the planning process for the latest County Hall vanity project, the Wellness Village, is well underway. As part of the Swansea Bay City Deal, this vision of private health care, drug trials and holistic therapy pods looks set to form, potentially, one of the biggest PFI-style taxpayer-draining misadventures we have seen for a while. It also involves our cash-strapped NHS health board.The business case for the project is currently with the UK government.

As for the planning permission, this, well, interesting graphic from the official documents reassures us that we can look forward to a state of deep spiritual joy and enlightenment down on the Delta Lakes swamp, or a weird cult...I'm not sure which..!