Council staff criticised over conduct case

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporting Service

A local councillor has blasted Powys council staff for the time it’s taking to organise a standards committee hearing into an allegation of a  Code of Conduct breach by a councillor.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Standards Community sub-committee, county councillors, lay and independent members as well as representatives of town and community councils in Powys went through the minutes of the last committee meeting on February 4.

The minutes showed that the committee had asked the deputy monitoring officer at the time, Debby Jones, to ask her counterparts at Ceredigion council if they could hold the hearing .

On that date in February the committee had received a report from Public Services Ombudsman for Wales and Powys council’s monitoring officer on the complaint made “against a councillor”.

The minutes doesn’t specify who the allegation was made against.

However, it does say that the committee believed the councillor should be allowed to answer the allegation: “either orally or in writing in respect of the findings of the investigation and any allegation that he has failed, or may have failed, to comply with the code of conduct.

Newtown and Llanllwchaiarn councillor Richard White, who represents Montgomeryshire town and community councils on the committee, said that he “wasn’t happy” with how the minutes had been written up.

Cllr White said: “What we agreed was that we would seek to get another authority to do the hearing, not just Ceredigion, but any authority.

“So, this is not accurate it should read we would be approaching any other authority to hear the matter.”

Committee Chair, Claire Moore, said: “Point taken, Ceredigion is the authority we have the closest working relationship with.”

Cllr White continued: “So I understand from Steve Boyd (cabinet manager).

“I spoke to him last week and said he’d been to Ceredigion, and they had said they don’t have the capacity to do it.

“But that doesn’t stop him going to the 20 other (local) authorities which he’s had four and half months to do, since our last meeting.

“It only takes a moment to send an email to all the other 20 authorities at the touch of a button.”

Ms Moore said: “No blame there, a lot of issues have come up.”

The last four and a half months have seen  the Senedd Elections take place which includes a pre-election period which sees work grind to a halt at Powys and many other council’s  in Wales, for fear of influencing the election.

The council’s legal chief and monitoring officer, Clive Pinney retired which also saw a departmental re-jig with former deputy monitoring officer Debby Jones stepping up into the vacated roles.

Cllr Moore said: “I want to reassure members this is in hand and will be addressed in the next couple of weeks.”

The minutes were then agreed.